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THE WAR AND THE 
BAGDAD RAILWAY 

THE STORY OF ASIA MINOR 

AND ITS RELATION TO THE 

PRESENT CONFLICT 



BY THE SAME AUTHOR 

THE CIVILIZATION OF 

BABYLONIA AND 

ASSYRIA 

ITS REMAINS, LANGUAGE, HISTORY, 

RELIGION, COMMERCE, LAW, ART 

AND LITERATURE 

BY 

MORRIS JASTROW, Jr., Ph.D., LL.D. 

Professor of Semitic Languages, University of Pennsylvania 

With map and 164 illustrations. Octavo. Gilt top, 
in a box. Net $7.00. 

Art and Archeology: — "This magnificent book 
gives a comprehensive and complete survey of the 
whole civilization of the ancient peoples, who dwelt in 
the Tigro-Euphrates Valley. It is written by one of 
the foremost Semitic scholars of the world, and super- 
sedes all works upon the subject. Written in the 
author's characteristic lucid style, it is sumptuously 
illustrated, and is a beautiful specimen of bookmaking. 



THE WAR AND THE 
BAGDAD RAILWAY 

THE STORY OF ASIA MINOR AND ITS 
RELATION TO THE PRESENT CONFLICT 

BY 

MORRIS JASTROW, Jr., Ph.D., LL.D. 

PROFESSOR IN THE UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA 
AUTHOR OF "THE CIVILIZATION OF BABYLONIA AND ASSYRIA," ETC. 

WITH U ILLUSTRATIONS 
AND A MAP 



'Hard Days, Sword Days, Death Days. 
(Vaulundurs Saga) 



SECOND IMPRESSION, WITH A NEW PREFACE 




PHILADELPHIA AND LONDON 
J. B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY 






COPYRIGHT, IQI 7, BY J. B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY 
COPYRIGHT, I9I8, BY J. B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY 



PUBLISHED NOVEMBER, I9I7 
SECOND IMPRESSION, FEBRUARY, 1918 

G»FT 
MRS. S. A THOMPSON 
S£PT, 27. 19*0 



PRINTED BY J. B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY 

AT THE WASHINGTON SQUARE PRESS 

PHILADELPHIA, U. S. A. 



C 



TO THE 

MEMBERS OF THE WEDNESDAY 
MORNING CLUB OF PITTSFIELD, MASS. 
WITH MANY PLEASANT MEMORIES 



PREFACE TO THE SECOND IMPRESSION 

I avail myself of the publication of a second print- 
ing of this work (without any changes in the text) 
to amplify somewhat the distinction between the war 
as it appeared in 1914 and its aspect in 1917, which 
I set forth at the beginning of the concluding chapter. 
The distinction made between what I call the two wars 
is, as I can see, open to an interpretation which was 
remote from my mind. The main purpose of this 
concluding chapter is to bring forward a proposed 
solution for the Eastern Question, suggested as the 
result of a prolonged study both of the ancient and of 
the modern East. By way of leading up to this solu- 
tion I felt it desirable to emphasize that the various 
issues which confronted Europe at the outbreak of 
the war in 1914, — and among which, as I endeavored 
to show, the Bagdad Railway was the largest single 
contributing factor, — have been moved into the back- 
ground through the supreme and paramount issue 
which became more sharply defined as the war pro- 
gressed. This paramount issue, the existence of a 
ruthless militarism in close alliance with an entirely 
antiquated form of autocratic government, is essen- 
tially a moral one, for the attempt to terrorize the 
world and to carry out a national policy of domination 
through sheer military force are two cardinal sins 
against what may be called the conscience of the world. 

It is not the first time that such a menace has con- 
fronted the world, but it may safely be asserted that 
the menace has never appeared in so formidable a 

1 



2 PREFACE 

guise. The world cannot pursue its even course until 
the spectre of Prussian militarism has been laid. The 
paramount issue, as I indicate in my volume, must 
be disposed of first, before the questions confronting 
Europe during the fateful last week of July can be 
taken up. 

In drawing a distinction, therefore, between the 
two wars, I did not wish to imply that there was no 
connection between them. On the contrary I indicated 
that the main factor leading to the recognition on the 
part of the civilized world of the paramount issue 
was Germany's brutal and inexcusable conduct of the 
war which revealed her sinister plans, formed long 
before 1914, for forceful domination of the East with- 
out regard to the simplest demands of international 
law or to the most elementary considerations of 
humanitarianism. The purpose of these plans was by 
means of such domination to establish for herself the 
commanding place in the world to the discomfiture 
and virtual subjugation of her rivals. 

Writing as a student of history, whose primary 
obligation is to present the various sides of a situa- 
tion clearly and fairly before pronouncing a verdict, 
I give, in the course of the discussion, Germany's side 
of the diplomatic position as it appeared on August 
1st, 1914, that is to say, at the time of the declaration 
of war on Russia ; and I do this in order to emphasize 
that giving Germany the full benefit of every doubt, — 
on the assumption that she was entirely sincere in the 
presentation of her case in the White Book issued by 
the German Government shortly after the outbreak 
of the war, — she would still be condemned in the eyes 
of the world by her conduct of the war, which spoilt 
any case that she might have had. 



PREFACE 3 

My indictment represents the verdict after a review 
of her case. We might, as I suggest in the same con- 
nection, go even so far as to waive the question whether 
she actually willed the war, and assume that the pres- 
sure of the military party on the civil government 
forced the issue (and for which there is some evi- 
dence), and yet we would have to condemn her just 
as strongly because of her unwillingness to prevent 
the war by her fateful and criminal rejection of Sir 
Edward Grey's proposition for a conference to settle 
the Austrian-Servian crisis and to which conference 
all the other powers had consented. 

Concerned as I am in this closing chapter, as 
throughout the book, with the Eastern Question, I 
did not deem it necessary to enlarge on the more 
general aspects of the war (particularly as my views 
on that phase have merely the value of the ordinary 
observer), or I would have emphasized strongly, in- 
stead of merely suggesting as I do, that Germany's 
support of Austria's contention that the Servian ques- 
tion was a matter for her to settle without European 
intervention, had a sinister substratum. That sinister 
substratum is, of course, more clearly evident now, 
in 191 7, than it was in 19 14, though at that time it was 
no doubt recognized in the European Chancelleries, 
familiar with the details of Germany's plan for domi- 
nation of the East. The railway from Berlin- Vienna- 
Constantinople leads through Belgrade, Nish and Sofia. 
The control of Servia, as of Bulgaria, was, therefore, 
essential to Germany for carrying out the Hamburg 
to Bagdad project, the very core of Pan-Germanism, 
as I point out towards the close of the chapter on 
the Bagdad Railway. 



4 PREFACE 

At the same time, while it is evident that the Bagdad 
Railway project was thus the deciding factor that 
led Germany in July, 19 14, to take the position that 
directly brought on the war as an inevitable outcome 
of that position, it must be recognized by the historian 
— as it is indeed recognized by all thoughtful stu- 
dents — that there were other issues, of a most serious 
and threatening character, that helped to complicate the 
situation in Europe and that contained the menace 
of an Inter-European war. No one can read Mr. 
Lowes Dickinson's careful analysis of the European 
situation in 19 14, as succinctly set forth in his " Euro- 
pean Anarchy," to which I refer several times in the 
course of my book, or read the account of the diplo- 
matic negotiations in M. P. Price's Diplomatic History 
of the War, or any other of a dozen books that might 
be mentioned, without realizing the combustible ma- 
terial that lay loosely about in the diplomatic workshops 
of Europe in 1914. It is only necessary to name the 
Balkan question, which had brought on two serious 
conflicts in two successive years shortly before 1914, 
and to refer to the admirable investigation of the com- 
plicated problem that has recently been published by 
Mr. J. A. R. Marriott ("The Eastern Question, A 
Study in European Diplomacy," Oxford, 191 7) to 
warn us against a onesided view by concentrating our 
exclusive attention on Germany's aggressive plans. The 
ambitions of Russia — at the time under the sway of 
an imperialistic group of much the same type as in 
Germany — to secure Constantinople and to form a 
Pan-Slavonic union to thwart Germany's ambitions 
and to check the plans of Austria-Hungary for the 
Balkan control, cannot, of course, be overlooked in a 
survey of the European situation in 1914. Italy, too, 



PREFACE 5 

had been growing restless for a slice of the East. In 
191 1 she had seized Tripoli, which had brought on her 
war with Turkey. She was laying plans for a zone 
of influence along the southern coast of Asia Minor 
and she manifested a direct and aggressive interest in 
the Albanian question. The growing economic rivalry 
between England and Germany for the markets of 
the world was another issue that, to be sure, was not 
disassociated from the political ambitions of Germany, 
for the German government was behind the commer- 
cial expansion plans of her manufacturers and mer- 
chants, ready to aid them in order to strengthen her 
political hold over her own population, but the rivalry 
nevertheless was an outcome of conditions that did not 
have their origin in diplomatic complications. It seems 
to me, therefore, that to distinguish sharply between 
the aspect of the war in 1914 and the aspect which 
it has in 191 7 is helpful to a clarification of the situa- 
tion — That is what I had in mind in representing the 
contrast as that between two wars. The para- 
mount issue in the present aspect of the war, so clearly 
defined in the various notable utterances of the official 
spokesman of this republic during 191 7 and 19 18, was, 
of course, present also in the war of 1914, but as an 
undercurrent which was brought to the surface 
through the three factors on which I dwell at the 
beginning of the closing chapter, to wit: Germany's 
conduct of the war, the Russian Revolution, and our 
entrance into the conflict. 

The rivalry for supremacy among the great Euro- 
pean nations is assuredly a fact that cannot be denied, 
as little as the fact that all of them — Russia, England, 
France, Italy and even Greece — had their national am- 
bitions in 1 9 14 and long before that period, as well 



6 PREFACE 

as Germany and Austria-Hungary. These ambitions 
took on different forms, a longing for more territory 
in some cases, a desire for political control of a region 
in others, and an ambition for spheres of commercial 
influence with or without political control in still 
others. Conflicting ambitions are as natural among 
nations as are rivalries in the non-political commercial 
world. When these conflicting ambitions reach a crisis, 
war is always imminent, and under the historical con- 
ditions that held sway in Europe prior to 1914, it may 
be said that war is almost inevitable. Witness the 
fact that the nineteenth century, despite its glorious 
achievements in science and its marvelous material 
progress through discoveries and inventions that have 
revolutionized the aspect of life, has more wars to its 
credit — or rather, to its discredit — than almost any 
other century in the world's history. 

It is not easy, without an effort, to project our- 
selves back to 1 9 14 without being influenced by the 
viewpoint that has developed in 191 7. It is quite 
natural that we should look at 1914 from the vantage 
ground of the development of the war, but if we 
make the effort to visualize conditions three and a 
half years ago as they then appeared to the surface 
observer, there is, I feel, considerable justification for 
regarding the war of 19 14 — viewed from the point 
of view of 1914, and not of 1917 — as a struggle for 
supremacy among European nations, brought about, 
in the last analysis, as the result of conflicting national 
ambitions, with Germany's aggressive policy for dom- 
ination in the East, under the threat and menace of 
the mailed fist, as the chief factor, but not as the only 
one, in leading to the conflict that has plunged the 
world in such sorrow and suffering. 



PREFACE 7 

We may, at the present moment, look hopefully 
towards the future. The message, voiced so effec- 
tively by President Wilson, presaging the dawn of a 
new era in which the rights of nations to life and 
liberty will receive the first consideration, and in 
which the will of the people will be the sovereign 
force everywhere, is sweeping like a mighty current 
through the world. That message is penetrating even 
the thick walls that the Central Powers have erected 
around themselves to prevent their people from hear- 
ing the new gospel. It may be that these walls will 
have to be stormed at the point of the bayonet and 
amidst the roar of cannon before the message can 
reach Germany and Austria-Hungary in all its force, 
but of the ultimate triumph of the higher principle in 
the regulation of international relations, announced 
over two thousand years ago by a Hebrew prophet, 
" Not by might nor by power, but by my spirit " — of 
the triumph of the idea, through its inherent force, 
and stripped of all shining armor — there -need be no 
doubt and there need be no fear. 

M. J., Jr. 
Philadelphia, February, 1918 



PREFACE TO THE FIRST IMPRESSION 

The purpose of this volume is to elucidate an 
aspect of the war which although it is overshadowed 
at present by the paramount issue — the menace of 
a militarism in league with autocracy — was the most 
significant single factor contributing to the outbreak 
of the long- foreseen war in 191 4, and will form one 
of the most momentous problems when the time 
for the peace negotiations arrives. Ever since the 
announcement was made towards the close of the 
year 1899 that the Turkish government had con- 
ceded to a German syndicate the privilege of build- 
ing a railway to connect Constantinople with 
Bagdad through a transverse route across Asia 
Minor, the Bagdad Railway has been the core of 
the Eastern Question. There were to be sure other 
aspects of that question, which led to the two Balkan 
wars of 1912 and 1913, but the addition of the Bagdad 
Railway was an aggravating factor to an already 
sufficiently complicated situation that involved the 
great European powers — England, France, Germany 
and Russia — in a network of diplomatic negotiations, 
the meshes of which became closer as the years rolled 
on. The railway became the spectre of the twen- 
tieth century. It was a spectre that always appeared 
armed " from top to toe " and when occasionally he 
" wore his beaver up," the face was that of a grim, 
determined warrior. 

As an industrial enterprise, the project of a rail- 
way through a most notable historic region, and 
passing along a route which had resounded to the 
tread of armies thousands of years ago, was fraught 

9 



10 PREFACE 

with great possibilities of usefulness in opening up 
the nearer East to brisk trade with Europe that 
would follow in the wake of the locomotive, and in 
infusing the young Western spirit into the old East, 
carrying western ideas, western modes of education, 
and western science to the mother-lands of civiliza- 
tion. The railway would also prove to be a short 
cut to India and the farther East, and as such the 
undertaking was on a plane of importance with the 
cutting of the Suez Canal. Connecting through 
junctions and branches with the other railway sys- 
tems of Asia Minor, Syria and Palestine, the Bagdad 
Railway would result in covering the entire region 
with a perfect network of modern methods of trans- 
portation that would embrace eventually also the 
projected railways of Persia. Full credit should be 
given to the German brains in which this project 
was hatched, and there is no reason to suspect that 
at the outset, the German capitalists who fathered 
the enterprise were actuated by any other motive 
than the perfectly legitimate one to create a great 
avenue of commerce. When, however, the German 
government entered the field as the backer and pro- 
moter of the scheme, the political aspect of the rail- 
way was moved into the foreground, and that aspect 
has since overshadowed the commercial one. The 
full political import of the Bagdad Railway becomes 
apparent in the light of the eventful history of Asia 
Minor which can now be followed, at least in general 
outlines, from a period as early as 2000 B.C. To 
illustrate the main thesis suggested by the route of 
the railway that the control of the historic highway 
stretching from Constantinople to Bagdad has at 
all times involved the domination of the Near East, 
it has been necessary to sketch the history of Asia 



PREFACE 11 

Minor in its relation to the great civilizations of 
antiquity and to follow that history through the 
period of Greek, Roman, Parthian and Arabic con- 
trol, past the efforts of the Crusaders to save the 
route for Christian Europe, to the final conquest of 
it by the Ottoman Turks. That event, marked by the 
capture of Constantinople in 1453, directly led to the 
discovery of America in 1492. 

I feel that no apology is needed for thus devoting 
a large chapter of the volume to this history, for 
apart from its intrinsic interest, our understanding 
of the present situation in the Near East is dependent 
upon an appreciation of the position that Asia Minor, 
as the bridge leading to the East, has always held. 

The war has resulted in bringing many countries 
closer to our horizon, but no lands more so than 
those to which Asia Minor, as I shall attempt to show, 
is the Hinterlmd — Mesopotamia, Syria, Arabia and 
Egypt. Until recently, the history of these lands 
has been looked upon by the general public as the 
domain of the specializing historian, philologist and 
archaeologist. With the extension of the European 
war into these eastern lands, they become a part — 
and an essential part — of the general political situa- 
tion. Their history needs to be known, if the prob- 
lems arising from the relation of Asia Minor to the 
issues of the war are to be dealt with at the peace 
conference in an intelligent manner. I cherish the 
hope which, I trust, is not a delusion, that my sketch 
of the history of Asia Minor will help to illuminate 
the factors underlying " the trend towards the East " 
which began with Alexander the Great, which led 
modern nations to take possession of eastern lands, 
and of which the Bagdad Railway is the latest 
manifestation. 



12 PREFACE 

I have thought it proper to give the story of the 
Bagdad Railway in some detail, because through 
this we can best follow the growth of the spirit of 
hostile rivalry among European nations which cul- 
minated in the outbreak three years ago. A war 
like the present one cannot, to be sure, be carried 
back to any one issue, isolated from all others, but 
although many issues are behind the war, it is the 
Bagdad Railway that created the frame of mind 
among the European powers which made the war — 
one is inclined to put it — inevitable. A war breaks 
out when nations are ready for it — ready, I mean, 
in their disposition. The Bagdad Railway made 
them ready in this sense. The story of the Bagdad 
Railway tells us how this frame of mind was pro- 
duced — and yet back of it all, we must bear in mind 
the deeper currents of history that produce the 
agitation on the surface. 

The study of the relation of Asia Minor to the 
present conflict — on the basis of its history — would be 
incomplete without at least an attempt to peer into 
the future, a hazardous undertaking but which 
nevertheless has its value in at least suggesting 
the line along which the solution of the problem 
of the Bagdad Railway, and with it the Eastern 
Question of which it is the core is to be sought. 
As a preliminary to this outlook, I have tried to 
set forth the sharp distinction between what I would 
call the two wars — the war of 1914 and the war of 
1 91 7. The recognition of this distinction appears to me 
to be essential for an understanding of the situation 
that will arise at the time of the peace conference. 

The former war is in the main the European 
struggle for supremacy, the latter is the great world 
war for the preservation and spread of the spirit 



PREFACE 13 

and the institutions of democracy. I am writing as 
a student of history and not as a partisan, except 
in so far as my position is, as I believe it to be, in 
accord with the American point of view as voiced 
by its most thoughtful and most sober representa- 
tives. I have no sympathy even in war time with 
that blatant form of patriotism which warps one's 
judgment and prevents a penetration into the deeper 
meaning of this war. It is the existence of that 
kind of patriotism in Germany which has produced 
the Pan-Germanic spirit, and the strength of which 
(though waning) prevents the German people from 
even now recognizing the reason for the hostility 
that they have aroused throughout the world. My 
indictment, therefore, of Germany's conduct of the 
war which has been the main factor, as I see it, lead- 
ing from the war of 1914 to that of 1917, is set forth 
" more in sorrow than in anger " — a sorrow that 
must, I think, be shared by all who admired the 
Germany before the war for her remarkable achieve- 
ments in all fields, and that bears heaviest on the 
thousands of Americans who, like myself, received 
the training for their careers at German universities 
and who feel keenly the intellectual ties that bind 
them to that country. But Germany has none but 
herself to blame for having thus transformed her 
friends into her opponents. She first handicapped 
those who were disposed at the outbreak of the war 
to see and present her side sympathetically by the 
violation of Belgian neutrality, she then condemned 
them to silence by the atrocious treatment of the 
Belgians and by the sinking of the Lusitania, and 
she finally converted them into enemies in arms by 
her ruthless submarine warfare that has done far 
more harm to the German name than any injury 



14 PREFACE 

that the sink-at-sight procedure can inflict on the 
world's shipping. As I write these lines I have 
before me a monograph by a German scholar on 
Germany's position in the East after the two Balkan 
wars in 1912 and 1913. Incidental to the discus- 
sion the author gives some shocking details, vouched 
for by reliable witnesses, of the atrocities committed 
in the first of these wars by the Bulgarians and 
Serbians. He speaks of the systematic attempt to 
wipe out the Turks by wholesale massacres on a 
huge scale, and the author asks, in a tone of right- 
eous indignation, whether the voice of humani- 
tarianism and civilization can remain silent with such 
deeds going on ? The Bulgarians are now the allies 
of the Germans, and in the present war the Turks 
seem to be following exactly the same policy towards 
the Armenians that the Bulgarians adopted to anni- 
hilate an entire people. Did the German govern- 
ment respond to the desperate cry of humanity to 
stop officially ordered massacres in Armenia? And 
yet the Turk is neither cruel nor — unless stirred up — 
fanatical. Those who have lived longest in Turkish 
countries and who know the Turk best bear evi- 
dence to the fine traits of his character and that under 
normal conditions, Turkish Moslems and Christian 
Armenians live quite amicably side by side. The 
Armenian massacres represent a part of the policy 
of the Turkish government, as the Russian pogroms 
under the old regime were always organized by the 
Russian government. The population is stirred up 
by spreading false reports of a proposed revolt on 
the part of the Armenians — and the rest follows. 
The war of 1914 as conducted by Germany forms 
a close parallel. The cruelties practised and the 
inhuman methods of warfare resorted to are part of 



PREFACE 15 

the military policy, and for which the German gov- 
ernment, following a deliberate plan of spreading 
terrorism and enforcing subordination, must bear 
the responsibility. The author whom I have quoted, 
assuming (as I do) that he is sincere in his denuncia- 
tion of cruelties officially carried out by the Bul- 
garian government, ought certainly to be able to 
answer the question why the whole civilized world 
has changed its former admiration for Germany into 
a realization that through her military policy, dic- 
tated by an autocratic group that cannot be called 
to account by the people, Germany has become a 
menace to the safety of the world. The German 
army — in its origin the creation of the German 
people organized to fight for its liberty as a nation — 
has become a mighty weapon in the hands of the 
rulers of Germany to hold the people at their mercy 
and to use the splendid patriotism of the people (that 
brought 1,800,000 volunteers to the front within 
one week after the declaration war), for the fur- 
therance of plans that endanger the happiness of 
other nations and that are to serve towards strength- 
ening the power of autocracy. This " new " Ger- 
many, revealed by the conduct of the war, must be 
overcome in order to bring back the Germany of 
ante-bellum days. The " old " Germany, we now 
sadly recognize, died in 1914 — possibly earlier, on 
June 15, 1888, when Frederick III, surnamed the 
" Noble," passed away after a reign of one hundred 
days. 1 The old Germany, as Brandes well says, 
gave us " everything German that is loved or appreci- 
ated." It can be recreated only through the democra- 

1 George Brandes, a friend and lover of Germany if ever 
there was one, calls these one hundred days the " short gleam 
of a clear human spirit breaking in on our war-mad empire." 
The World at War, p. 6. 



16 PREFACE 

tization of Germany's form of government. This 
advance will assuredly come about either during 
the war, or as a direct result of the war, when the 
ghastly crisis through which the world is passing 
shall happily be a thing of the past, to become, 
after the lapse of some years, a memory that will 
continue to haunt the world for generations to come. 

Unless, however, at the end of the war, the great 
nations of the world give the proper cue for the 
work of reconstruction by advocating a policy of 
co-operation with the East, instead of open or dis- 
guised exploitation, we will continue to have an 
Eastern Question that may again pass through 
the same process (with perhaps different contest- 
ants) to culminate in open hostility. " Internation- 
alization " of all schemes for opening up the East 
to the West is the solution of the Eastern Question 
for which I have ventured to enter a plea at the 
close of this book. 

It remains for me to make acknowledgment, as 
in the case of all my publications, to the invaluable 
assistance given to me by my dear wife in reading 
both the manuscript and the proof, and helping in 
various other ways, including the encouragement 
to trespass upon fields adjacent to my own and to 
which the study of the war in the East led me. I 
also wish to make grateful acknowledgment to my 
friend, Mrs. Gardiner Gayley, for many sugges- 
tions made in discussing with her the plan and the 
thesis of this study. To my former student, Hon. 
Edward I. Nathan, American Consul at Mersina 
from 1910 to the breaking of our diplomatic rela- 
tions with Turkey, and who has rendered distin- 
guished services at his responsible post, I am 
under obligations for criticisms and for valuable 
information regarding the industries of Turkey, par- 



PREFACE 17 

ticularly at Mersina, which I have embodied in 
one of the notes attached to the volume. I should 
like to call particular attention to these notes in 
which I have given bibliographical and explanatory- 
details for those who wish to pursue the subject 
further. The map, prepared by Mr. Earl Thatcher 
with great care, will, I trust, prove useful. I am 
indebted to Mr. Leon Dominian, of the American 
Geographical Society, for permission to make use 
of his map of railroads in Turkey published by him 
in " Frontiers of Language and Nationality in 
Europe " (Henry Holt & Co., N. Y., 1917). A special 
feature of my map is the inclusion of all railroads, 
both those constructed and those projected in Asia 
Minor, Syria, Palestine and Mesopotamia. The 
map will enable the reader to follow the further 
course of development of the war in the various 
sections of the Near East. For countries, lying out- 
side of the special topic of this volume, I have contented 
myself with indicating merely a few places as an orien- 
tation ; and in order not to confuse the reader by making 
the map too crowded, I have selected for Asia Minor 
only the important places and more particularly 
those that are connected with events in the history 
of the region. My thanks are due to Dr. Edward 
Robinson, Director of the Metropolitan Museum of 
New York, who kindly placed at my disposal a 
photograph of the fine Hittite monument of the 
Museum — the only one of the kind (so far as I am 
aware) in this country. To my friend and colleague, 
Professor J. H. Breasted, of the University of 
Chicago, and to the publishers, Ginn & Co. and the 
University of Chicago, I am indebted for permission 
to use two illustrations, one in his excellent manual 
on Ancient History (Boston, 1916) and the other 
from his monograph, The Battle of Kadesh (Chicago, 



18 PREFACE 

1901); to Professor John Garstang for permission 
to use some of the illustrations in his Land of the 
Hittites (Dutton & Co., New York) ; to Mr. Ernest 
Leroux for the similar courtesy to use some illustra- 
tions from Nettancourt-Vaubecourt Sur Les Grandes 
Routes de VAsie Mineure (Paris, 1908) published by 
him; and to Mr. C. E. Lydecker, the Counsellor of 
the American Chamber of Commerce of Constanti- 
nople, for his approval in using several illustrations 
from The Levant Trade Review — a most important 
source of information for the commerce and indus- 
tries of the Near East, and to which I am particularly 
glad to call the attention of all interested in Eastern 
matters. 

To the Hon. Otis A. Glazebrook, who has made 
such a notable record as United States Consul at Jeru- 
salem till the diplomatic break with Turkey, I beg to 
make acknowledgment for authentic information in re- 
gard to present conditions of railways in Palestine. 

Mr. H. De Wolf Fuller, the editor of The Nation 
(New York) has kindly permitted me to embody in 
this book, in an enlarged and revised form, some views 
set forth by me in an article written for The Nation 
and published in the issue of August 30, 191 6, under the 
title of " The World's Highway." Lastly, it is a gen- 
uine pleasure to dedicate the little volume to the mem- 
bers of the Wednesday Morning Club, of Pittsfield 
(Mass.), in recollection of many visits to the charming 
" heart of the Berkshires " as their guest. To speak 
before the delightful and sympathetic audience that 
gathers at the weekly reunions of this Club during the 
summer months is a privilege which I am sure all who 
are invited to do so value as highly as I do. 

Morris Jastrow, Jr. 
University of Pennsylvania 
November, 191 7 



CONTENTS 



CHAPTER p AGE 

I. THE WAR IN THE EAST 23 

II. THE STORY OF ASIA MINOR 31 

III. THE STORY OF THE BAGDAD RAILWAY 82 

IV. THE ISSUE AND THE OUTLOOK 122 

NOTES 153 



ILLUSTRATIONS 

PACE 

English Steamers on the Tigris at Bagdad Frontispiece 

View Near Sardis, the Ancient Capital of Lydia 32 

(Reproduced from Garstang, The Land of the Hittiles, Plate 
XXVI.) 

The Entrance of the Famous Cilician Gates Across Which 
Armies have Passed from Before 2000 B.C. Down to 
Our Own Days. The Bagdad Railway Passes a Little to 

the East of the Pass 32 

(Reproduced from Garstang, Plate XXI.) 

Hittite Rock Sculpture at Ivriz, not Far from Eregli, on the 
Bagdad Railway Route, Representing a Hittite Ruler 
in an Attitude of Adoration Before a God of Agricul- 
ture and Viniculture — A Hittite Bacchus. A Specimen 
of the Enormous Rock Sculptures Found in Central and 
Northern Asia Minor, Dating from the Days of the 
Hittites. The Figure of the Deity is 14 Feet High; 
that of the King 8 Feet High. The Sculpture Dates 
from About 1000 B.C 36 

(Reproduced from Nettancourt-Vaubecourt, Sur les Grandes 
Routes de I'Asie Mineure, Leroux, Paris, 1908, Plate XVII.) 

Ruins of the Entrance to the Great Hittite Fortress at 
Boghaz-Keui, Showing Cyclopean Character of the Con- 
struction and the Lion Sphinxes Guarding the Entrance; 
Dating from About 1500 B.C 36 

(Reproduced from Meyer, Reich und Kultur der Chetiter, (Berlin, 
ioi4).Fig. 5. 

An Ancient Hittite and His Modern Armenian Descendant 40 

(Reproduced from Breasted, Ancient Times, Ginn and Company, 
1916. Fig. 146.) 

19 



20 ILLUSTRATIONS 

Monolith of a Hittite Ruler with an Inscription in Hittite 
Hieroglyphics, Containing a Dedicatory Record of the 
Ruler's Achievements. Found Outside of Marash to the 
North of Killis on the Bagdad Railway Route in Asia 
Minor, This is the Only Hittite Monument in this 
Country and is Reproduced from a Photograph Kindly 
Furnished for this Volume by Dr. Edward Robinson, 
Director of the Metropolitan Museum. The Stone is 3 
Feet 6 Inches High 40 

The Great Battle of Kadesh on the Orontes, Between the 
Egyptians and Hittites, which Took Place c. 1295 B.C. 
The Egyptian Pharaoh, in His Chariot, Dominating 
the Scene is Rameses II, Who is Represented as Per- 
sonally Directing the Battle. Relief on a Temple Wall 
at Luxor 46 

(Reproduced from Breasted, The Battle of Kadesh, University of 
Chicago Decennial Publications, 1903.) 

Primitive Method of Irrigation in Mesopotamia as Still 
Carried on by the Natives. The Bucket of Skin is 
Lowered into the Water and is then Raised by a Draft 
Animal — Horse, Donkey or Bullock — Walking Down 
the Inclined Plane, and the Water Distributed Through 

the Neighboring Fields 65 

(Reproduced from the Levant Trade Review, September, 19 14.) 

The Portal at Nigdeh (not Far from Eregli on the Bagdad 
Route), Forming Part of a Medresseh (Mohammedan 
School) and Dating from c. 1223 A.D. Specimen of the 
Art and Architecture of the Selyuk Turks in Asia Minor. 65 
(Reproduced from Garstang, Plate XXXII.) 

View of Angora, the Ancient Ancyra, the Scene of Many 
Battles in the History of Asia Minor, and the Terminus 

of the Anatolian Railway 82 

(Reproduced from Nettancourt-Vaubecourt, Plate VII.) 



ILLUSTRATIONS 21 

Konia, the Ancient Iconium, the Seat of Residence of the 
Selyuk Sultans and One of the Main Stations on the 
Bagdad Railway 82 

(Reproduced from the Levant Trade Review, March, 1915.) 

Bridge on the Bagdad Railway Route over the Euphrates 
at Jerablus, the Site of the Ancient Hittite City of 
Carchemish. The Bridge has a Length of 850 Yards 
and Its Constructive Steel and Iron parts have a Total 

Weight of 3400 tons II0 

(Reproduced from the Levant Trade Review, June, 1915.) 

The Terminal Station of the Bagdad Railway at Haidar- 
Pasha, Opposite Constantinople. This is the Starting- 
point of the Famous Railway, which has Now Been 
Completed Except for Two Sections Covering About 
265 Miles. The Length of the Railway from Constan- 
tinople to Bagdad is 1512 Miles no 

(Reproduced from the Levant Trade Review, March, 1915.) 

Map of Asia Minor, Mesopotamia, Palestine, Syria, Arabia 
and Egypt, Showing Route of the Bagdad Railway and 
Other Railroads in Asia Minor, Syria, Palestine and 
Arabia, the Ancient Trade Routes and the Route of 
Alexander the Great !6 



THE WAR AND THE 
BAGDAD RAILWAY 

CHAPTER I 
THE WAR IN THE EAST 



History is being made to-day through the war in 
lands replete with historic associations, that have 
witnessed the rise and decay of many a civilization. 
The conflict raging in three continents and shared in 
by the fourth sees armies taking possession of the 
valley of the Nile, whose pyramids were built 5000 
years ago. Passing over a route identical in part 
with that of the traditional Exodus, the march of the 
English troops toward Jerusalem suggests a repe- 
tition of the Crusades of the Middle Ages. Cross and 
Crescent once more lock arms at sites that have 
acquired a sacred significance in the traditions of 
three religions. Further East, Russian armies are 
following the route of the Ten Thousand 1 on the 
eastern border of Asia Minor, and are moving in 
Persia along some of the old routes on which the 
hosts of Cyrus passed in their descent upon the 
Euphrates Valley, and which two centuries later 
witnessed the remarkable invasion of the old East 

1 Trebizond at the southeastern corner of the Black Sea, 
captured by the Russians in the early campaigns of the war, 
is the point where the Greeks on their retreat from Babylonia 
(401 b.c.) at last reached the seashore. 

23 



24 THE WAR AND THE BAGDAD RAILWAY 

by the young Lochinvar, come out of the West. The 
imagination is stirred by the exploits of English 
armies landing at the head of the Persian Gulf and 
moving along the Tigris across the mounds, which 
have in part yielded but in large part still cover 
the remains of the civilization that arose in the 
Euphrates Valley thousands of years ago and which, 
spreading northwards, became the rival of Egyptian 
achievements. 

Can any romance be stranger than the streets 
of Bagdad, only sixty miles distant from the ruins 
of ancient Babylon, with memories of past glory 
reaching back to Harun al-Rashid, resounding to 
the steps of European soldiery, and Mosul, opposite 
which lies all that remains of Nineveh " the great 
city," once mistress of the world, at the mercy of 
a European power! What does it all mean? It 
is reported that on the top of the remains of one of 
the ancient towers that formed a feature of the 
temples of Babylonia a " wireless " station has been 
installed since the beginning of the war. This par- 
ticular tower is the one, curiously enough, which 
tradition associates with the famous Tower of Babel. 
Are we perhaps to see in the use to which this senti- 
nel of a hoary antiquity has been converted an 
omen of the conquest of the East by the aggressive 
West? Or is it a symbol of the resuscitation of 
the East through the infusion of the progressive 
spirit of the West? Are the dry bones scattered 
through the valley as in the vision of Ezekiel, 2 once 
more to be knit together with sinews and to be 
covered with new flesh? 

On the other hand, in Arabia the standard of re- 

* Ezekiel, Chap. 37. 



THE WAR IN THE EAST 25 

volt has been unfurled. 3 The cry has been raised 
to reclaim the land in which Mohammed preached 
his new religion in the early part of the seventh 
century of our era for the people to which Moham- 
med belonged. Are we to witness perhaps a re- 
vival of the spirit which once created mighty forces 
to spread the Koran with the help of the sword 
throughout the world? Up to the present, to be 
sure, the " revolt " in Arabia hardly merits so digni- 
fied a name. The accounts of it sound more like a 
score of opera bouffe than a serious performance, 
but the anomaly presented for many centuries of a 
religion so essentially a product of the Semitic mind 
and an expression more particularly of the Arabic 
spirit as Islam controlled by a power of non-Arabic 
origin cannot endure for all times. To have the 
Sheikh el-Islam, the " chief of the church," at Con- 
stantinople, merely because Constantinople became 
the centre of a Turkish Empire four centuries ago, 
and a purely nominal head at that under the sur- 
veillance of a Young Turk cabinet, suspected of infi- 
delity and acting at the dictation of German officials, 
is indeed ludicrous. But England in encouraging 
the demand of Arabia for the Arabs — for she is be- 
hind this revolt — may be stirring up a spirit which 
it will be hard for her to control, for the spirit of 
Islam is still the spirit of fanaticism that sees only 
the doings of Iblis in a world that does not acknowl- 
edge Mohammed as the apostle of Allah. " Die ich 
rief, die Geister, werd' ich nun nicht los," says 
Goethe. The Near East is still largely the Moham- 

8 See Snouck Hurgronje's vivid account "The Revolt 
in Arabia," with a foreword by Richard J. H. Gottheil (New 
York, 1917). 



26 THE WAR AND THE BAGDAD RAILWAY 

medan East, capable of acting in accord if a great 
leader should arise, who will succeed in uniting the 
followers of Orthodox Sunna (" tradition ") with 
the Shiites 4 for a great common cause. Islam does 
not spell Progress. If reinforced, it may lead to a 
revival of a Near East that will once more be the 
antagonist of western culture, rather than a minor 
partner. The revival of the East is thus fraught 
with various possibilities that may take a turn for 
good or evil according to the throw of the dice 
on the table of fate. Or shall we accept the more 
comforting western belief that we can control the 
dice, and by wise counsels direct the course of events 
into the right channels ? Which shall it be, the optimis- 
tic creed of the West, " Life and death, the blessing 
and the curse, have I placed before thee, choose 
thou life" (Deuteronomy 30, 19), or the fatal- 
ism of the disillusioned East, which declares that 
" Allah is the only knowing one " ? 

II 

The key to the situation, however, lies not in 
Egypt nor in Arabia, neither in Palestine nor in 
Mesopotamia, but in the region of Asia Minor — 
along the great highway leading from Constantinople 
to Bagdad. That region has from the most ancient 
times determined the fate of the Near East. Its 
role in the distant past has ever been to threaten 
the existence of civilizations and powers that arose 

4 Islam, apart from numerous sects, is divided into two 
great divisions formed by those who follow the "sunna" or 
Orthodox tradition, as against those who set up the claim that 
AH was the direct successor of Mohammed. The latter are 
known as "Shiites" ("partisans"). 



THE WAR IN THE EAST 27 

in the valley of the Nile and in the valley of the 
Euphrates, as in the intervening lands of Palestine 
and Arabia. Egypt, Babylonia and Assyria ex- 
hausted their vitality in warding off the menace 
of the hordes that held the region. Hebrew Prophets 
announced the doom of the world through the com- 
ing of nations from the north — meaning Asia Minor. 
Cyrus and Alexander began their conquests of the 
old-time world by first securing a grasp on Asia 
Minor. With that in their hands, Babylonia, Pales- 
tine and Egypt fell easily into their lap. The 
Romans kept their grasp on the East as long as 
they held the routes through the mountain ridges 
of central Asia Minor. Islam failed in its world 
conquest because it could not hold this wild region 
in check, and the union of the Arabs broke up into 
rival caliphates. Decisive battles of the Crusades 
took place along these historic routes. A kingdom 
of Jerusalem was destined to failure from the start 
because it lay exposed to attacks from the North. 
The Turkish Empire was founded with the con- 
quest of Constantinople in 1453, because through 
that event the control of the highway leading to 
the Persian Gulf was established. As long as that 
empire was able to maintain the two poles of the 
electric wire stretching from Constantinople to 
Bagdad, her dominant position remained unchal- 
lenged; her definite decline begins with a break 
in the current. 

The conquest of that highway by Ottoman Turks 
meant the final triumph of Crescent over Cross, for 
it erected a barrier, shutting off Christian Europe 
from access to the entire East. A new route to 
India had to be found, and so in 1492 Columbus, sail- 



28 THE WAR AND THE BAGDAD RAILWAY 

ing from Spain with this end in view, discovered 
a new continent. 

In our own days we are witnessing what prom- 
ised to be the reopening of the old historic highway 
— the bridge uniting Europe to Asia — to Western 
control, through the project of a great railway 
stretching along a distance of nearly 2000 miles from 
a point opposite Constantinople to Bagdad, and 
thence to Basra and to the Persian Gulf. That proj- 
ect, which was well under way at the time of the 
outbreak of the war, is thus marked through its his- 
torical background as one of the most momentous 
enterprises of our age — more momentous because of 
the issue involved than the opening up of the two 
other world highways, the Suez and Panama canals. 

The creation of a railway from Constantinople 
to Bagdad under European control is at once a 
symptom of the dissolution of the Turkish Empire 
which has become a mere shadow of its former wide 
extension, and a significant token of the new in- 
vasion of the East by the spirit of Western enter- 
prise. Passing along a highway over which armies 
have marched forward and backward ever since 
the days of antiquity, the railway is also a link 
connecting the present with the remote past. 

More than this a project, which, on the surface, 
would appear to be solely commercial, assumes a 
romantic aspect through the struggle that the rail- 
way aroused for the control of a region that marked 
the ambition of all the great empires of ancient 
and mediaeval times. The rivalry between Ger- 
many, England, France and Russia, centering so 
largely during the past decade around the Bagdad 
Railway, is merely the renewal under changed 



THE WAR IN THE EAST 29 

conditions of a conflict that began thousands of 
years ago. The modern world fights for this region 
as the ancient world did, with the railroad as the 
new symbol of a possession stronger and firmer than 
the garrisons and outposts of antiquity and the for- 
tresses of the Roman and mediaeval periods. The 
importance of Constantinople lies in its position 
as the starting-point of the great highway that has 
as its natural outlets the Bay of Alexandretta on 
the one hand, and the Persian Gulf on the other. 
The historical role of this highway gives to the 
Bagdad Railway a political import far transcending 
its aspect as one of the great commercial enterprises 
of our days. Backed as the project was by the 
German government, steadily growing in power and 
aggressiveness since the establishment of the united 
German Empire, it added to the already complicated 
Eastern Question an aggravating factor that con- 
tributed largely to the outbreak of the great war. 
The present struggle for supremacy among Euro- 
pean powers resolves itself in its ultimate analysis 
into a rivalry for the control of the East as an 
adjunct to commercial expansion. The " trend 
towards the East " 5 did not originate with modern 
Germany. It began with Greece, was taken up by 
ancient Rome and has actuated every Western 
power with ambitions to extend its commerce and 
its sphere of influence — Spain, Holland, England and 
France, and in days nearer to us Russia arid Ger- 
many, Austria and Italy. Through a curious com- 
bination of circumstances, superinduced by the grad- 
ual weakening of the once dominant Turkish Em- 

6 " Drang nach Osten "—a favorite phrase among German 
political and economic publicists. 



30 THE WAR AND THE BAGDAD RAILWAY 

pire, the struggle has shaped itself into its present 
aspect for a control of the great highway that is 
the key to the East — the nearer and the farther East. 

A survey of the history of Asia Minor, as a 
resultant of the geographical contour of the region, 
furnishes the illustration to the thesis that the most 
recent events are merely the repetition on a larger 
scale of such as took place thousands of years ago, 
and at frequent intervals since. The weapons have 
changed, new contestants have arisen to take the 
place of civilizations that after serving their day 
faded out of sight, but the issue has ever remained 
the same. We are confronted by that issue to-day 
— the control of the highway that leads to the East. 
Through the war archaeological investigations and his- 
torical researches have been removed from their 
academic isolation to furnish the explanation for the 
political import of the Bagdad Railway project. 
The study of the remote past, so energetically pur- 
sued by European and American scholars during 
the past decades, is brought into the foreground 
through the stirring events of our days to illumine 
the bearings of the historic highway of Asia Minor 
on the issues at stake in the present world conflict. 
The decisive battlefields for the triumph of democ- 
racy are in the West, but the decision for supremacy 
among European nations lies in the East. The 
Bagdad Railway is the most recent act in a drama 
the beginnings of which lie in the remote past. 

To understand the Bagdad Railway project, 
therefore, we must turn to the role that Asia Minor 
has played in history. That history reveals to us 
why Asia Minor was ever, in the past, as she is to- 
day, the determining element in bringing about the 
alternate rise and decline of the East. 



CHAPTER II 
THE STORY OF ASIA MINOR 



Asia Minor is the Hinterland to Syria, Palestine 
and Egypt on the one side, and to Mesopotamia on the 
other. With an area of about 206,378 square miles x 
(a little larger than France and a little smaller than 
Germany) its distinctive features are (1) a series 
of high plateaus in the interior, sloping from 2000 
feet at the western edge to over 4000 feet towards 
the eastern border, with (2) several mountain ranges 
traversing the region longitudinally, rising in the north 
to over 8000 feet and in the south to over 10,000 feet, 
(3) a deeply indented western coast line with a fringe 
of protecting islands and with deep gulfs affording 
plenty of harbors. In contrast, the bleak north coast 
on the Black Sea has few harbors and no islands, 
while the southern coast is marked by a broad bay 
and a deep gulf and a number of land-locked har- 
bors. The rivers, though numerous, are of no great 
importance, and only a few are navigable for a short 
distance from their mouths. On the plateaus, 
broken by broad valleys in the west, the winters are 
long and cold, and the summers hot. The coast 
climate varies from cold winters and humid sum- 
mer vegetation on the Black Sea to a moderate cli- 

1 Its greatest length is 720 miles along the northern edge 
and at the south edge 650 miles. The breadth varies from 300 
to 420 miles. 

31 



32 THE WAR AND THE BAGDAD RAILWAY 

mate on the west coast, the summer heat being 
tempered by an almost daily north wind blowing 
off the sea, and reaching to extreme summer heat 
and mild winters on the south coast. Along the 
course of the rivers, vegetation is rich, aided by 
alluvial deposits to the soil, brought down by the 
streams as they pass through mountain gorges. The 
mineral wealth of Asia Minor is very great, and it 
would appear that iron was introduced as early as 
the second millenium before our era into the ancient 
East, through the working of the ore in the north- 
eastern corner of Asia Minor. 

The contrast presented by the coast land to that 
of the interior is paralleled by the totally different 
aspect of the earliest settlements along the iEgean 
Sea from the conditions that led to the rise of 
powerful states in the interior. The western coast 
of Asia Minor appears to have been settled in very 
early days through y£gean traders coming probably 
from Crete where, as the remarkable excavations of 
the last two decades have shown, a high degree of 
civilization, more commonly spoken of as Minoan, 
was developed between c. 3000 and 2500 B.C. It 
reached its height about 1600 B.C., but long ere this sent 
its offshoots to the Grecian mainland, notably to 
Argos. The great castles and palaces of Mycenae 
and Tiryns, excavated by Schlieman, are the works 
of these yEgeans coming from Crete, and there are 
traces of such settlements and influences elsewhere. 
The proto-Greek civilization, commonly spoken of 
as Mycenean, thus turns out to be of Cretan origin. 
Similarly, these ^Egeans came to the coast of Asia 
Minor, and in time a powerful kingdom with Troy 



■f&' 








THE STORY OF ASIA MINOR 33 

as a centre was established in the northwestern 
corner, reaching its height between c. 1500 and 1200 
B.C. 2 The Homeric poems, commemorating the con- 
flicts between iEgeans and Greeks, are thus brought 
nearer to us by the spade of the archaelogist. These 
^Egeans belonged to the Indo-European stock, and, 
in passing, it may be noted that the Philistines who 
as traders settled on the Palestinian coast (and gave 
their name to the country) also came from Crete, 
and represent, therefore, a part of a general move- 
ment of the spread of JEgean civilization, though 
confined to coast lands. Whether the earliest set- 
tlers of the interior of Asia Minor belonged to this 
same general stock, designated by the unsatisfactory 
term " Aryan," is not certain, though possible, but 
in any case these settlers appear to have come from 
the steppes of southern Russia across the Caucasus 
Mountains. From this centre streams of migration 
radiated in various directions, some passing to the 
southeast and eventually reaching India where they 
developed the old Hindu civilization; others passed 
around the Black Sea on the north and moved along 
the Danube into central Europe, and still others 
entered Asia Minor somewhere near its northeastern 
border. Traces of very ancient routes along this 
southern coast of the Black Sea and running into the 
interior 3 show how early the settlement of the in- 
terior of Asia Minor must have begun. 

2 The so-called sixth city of Schlieman's excavations. See 
Walter Leaf, Troy, pp. 85-101 and the map. 

3 See Ramsay's invaluable work, "The Historical Geog- 
raphy of Asia Minor" (Ldffdon, 1890), chapters I- VII, for 
a full discussion of these old routes. 



34 THE WAR AND THE BAGDAD RAILWAY 

II 

A region like the interior of Asia Minor broken up 
by mountain ranges, with no large river as an 
avenue of transportation, is not conducive to the 
creation of a single state, uniting groups of popula- 
tion through common interests. Rivalry rather than 
permanent union would represent the natural tend- 
ency among the combinations that would be formed 
by the hordes moving from time immemorial across 
the Caucasus and from lands lying beyond to the 
north and northeast. An indigenous civilization 
arising under such conditions would be marked by 
a hardiness reflecting the traits of the region. The 
break-up of the population through natural barriers 
separating the various groups would tend to the 
unfolding of strength, in order to secure protection 
from attack and to safeguard an independent exist- 
ence. Such peoples will build huge fortified castles 
and will create strong armies, actuated by the nat- 
ural ambition to put their strength to a test. Asia 
Minor is thus adapted to develop powers marked 
by militarism. 

Excavation and exploration in the interior of 
Asia Minor during the last thirty years have, as a 
matter of fact, revealed the existence of powerful 
military states organized by groups known as Hit- 
tites, and whose history reverts to the border of the 
third millennium before this era. Until archaeology had 
thus opened up the early history of Asia Minor, 
nothing was known of these Hittites beyond what 
could be gleaned from incidental notices in the Old 
Testament, where they appear chiefly as one of the 
groups like the Amorites, Perizzites and Canaanites 



THE STORY OF ASIA MINOR 35 

with whom the Hebrews were forbidden to marry. 
Then, as Egyptian and Babylonian monuments re- 
leased their secrets, references to the Khatti, whom 
scholars at first hesitatingly identified with the 
Hittites of the Old Testament, began to multiply in 
the records of Egyptian and Assyrian rulers. Grad- 
ually, it became evident that these Hittites must have 
been the most serious menace that the two great 
civilizations of the Near East had to encounter. 
Hittites loomed up larger and larger, as the written 
and pictorial material increased, but the full force 
of their position and achievements was not recog- 
nized until, through more thorough exploration, 
Hittite monuments and Hittite remains turned up 
in various parts of Asia Minor, dating back to the 
second millennium before this era. 

The character of these monuments and remains 
scattered throughout Asia Minor and northern Syria 
is so marked that there can be no doubt of their 
belonging to the same civilization. Rock sculptures, 
stone reliefs and inscribed stones extend east to west 
from Sipylos, not far from Smyrna, to Malatia on the 
Euphrates, and north to south from Boghaz- 
Keui to Hama on the Orontes, all showing the 
same characteristics. Great fortresses and palaces 
of elaborate construction have been found at Boghaz- 
Keui and Eyuk in northern Asia Minor and in Sakje- 
Geuzi and Sendjerli in the southeast beyond the 
Taurus range. These sites represent some of the 
walled towns of the Hittites, of which there were 
many, scattered throughout the region at strategical 
points near the mountain passes and elsewhere along 
the main routes. The scale of the constructions and 
of the rock sculptures illustrate the power developed 



36 THE WAR AND THE BAGDAD RAILWAY 

by the Hittites in the hey-day of their glory, which 
extends from c. 1500 to 1000 B.C. The entrance to 
the fort was through enormous gates flanked by lions 
or sphinxes. The city walls and the defences were 
constructed of large stones built in the most solid 
masonry. At Eyuk, some 20 miles to the north 
of Boghaz-Keui, on either side of the gateway, there 
is a long series of huge blocks on which scenes of a 
religious character, processions of priests and musi- 
cians, paying homage to a god and goddess, were 
sculptured in relief. Elsewhere the rocks portray vivid 
scenes of stag and lion hunts which were favorite sports 
of the Hittite rulers. 

Finally, there are a large number of inscriptions 
in the peculiar Hittite hieroglyphic characters, 
accompanying the sculptures, and the many in- 
scribed stones containing the explanation of the 
scenes or embodying votive dedications. By the side 
of these inscribed lapidary monuments, excavations 
at Boghaz-Keui conducted by the late Hugo Winck- 
ler in 1906-1907 have brought to light, to cap the 
surprise of scholars, thousands of clay tablets, like 
those found in Babylonian and Assyrian mounds, 
covered with cuneiform characters, but representing 
not the Sumerian (non-Semitic) or Akkadian (Semi- 
tic) language of the Euphrates Valley, but Hittite — 
the same language as that of the hieroglyphic inscrip- 
tions, transliterated into cuneiform. 4 This proof of 
the adoption of the cuneiform script for writing 
Hittite, because more convenient and simpler for 
correspondence and business documents — and that 

4 A parallel would be to come across Egyptian inscriptions 
written not with any of the varieties of the Egyptian script, 
but with Greek letters. 




HITTITE ROCK SCULPTURE AT IVRIZ (c. 1000 B.C.) 




RUINS OF THE ENTRANCE TO A HITTITE FORTRESS AT 
BOGHAZKEUI (c. I5OO B.C.) 



THE STORY OF ASIA MINOR 37 

as early at least as 1500 b.c — is one of the most 
notable results of archaeological activity in Asia 
Minor. It points to the intercourse that must have 
existed between Asia Minor and the Euphrates Val- 
ley in the second millenium before this era. 

Although the Hittite hieroglyphics have not as yet 
been deciphered, the character of the language spoken 
by the Hittites has been established. It turns out 
to belong to the " Aryan " or more properly the 
Indo-European stock — a somewhat surprising dis- 
covery, and yet in keeping with the most plausible 
hypothesis of the origin of the Hittites from the 
steppes of southern Russia as the starting-point of 
successive waves of Aryan migration in various 
directions. 

Looking, however, at the types of Hittite as 
pictured on their sculptures, one cannot escape the 
comparison with Mongoloid types, and this impres- 
sian is confirmed by the representation of Hittites 
on Egyptian monuments which give us distinctly the 
high cheek-bones and retreating forehead, character- 
istic of the Tartar races. To these features is to 
be added the pig-tail, 5 depicted on Egyptian monu- 
ments and so consistently portrayed on Hittite 
sculptures. By the side of this type, however, we 
find also on the Egyptian monuments, portraying 
scenes and expeditions in Asia Minor, another which 
is more Indo-European in character, and we en- 
counter this type also in some of the figures in the 
religious processions and in the ceremonial designs 
on tombstones throughout the Hittite region. Such 
indications point again to the supposition which, on 

6 The pig-tail is, however, not confined to the Tartars and 
Chinese. 



38 THE WAR AND THE BAGDAD RAILWAY 

a priori grounds, is plausible that what we call the 
Hittite civilization is the result of a commingling 
of different ethnic groups. Culture seems to be the 
spark that ensues when two different elements meet 
and combine, though in time one of the elements 
predominates. 

Ill s 

It will be evident from this survey that the term 
Hittite is to be regarded as a very general one to 
mark a type of civilization in which the* Hittite be- 
came the predominating element, but in whidi, as a 
product of the mixture of Hittites with other ethnic 
elements, others than Hittites participate. It is 
natural, therefore, to find various centres of Hittite 
culture. We find several Hittite states of consider- 
able power in northern Syria, while further north, 
Boghaz-Keui became the capital of a Hittite state, 
which in the middle of the fifteenth century B.C. 
acquired a commanding position over a large part of 
Asia Minor, including northern Syria. 

Now the historical significance of these Hittite 
states lies entirely in their geographical position, 
which made them a menace to Egypt on the one 
hand and to Babylonia on the other, while Palestine 
as the unfortunate buffer state between these two 
civilizations was even more at the mercy of the war- 
like Hittites. The early history of Asia Minor is 
linked to the fortunes of these three lands. The key 
to the understanding of the political development of 
the ancient East, accompanying the rise of a high 
order of civilization in the two fertile valleys — the 
Nile and the Euphrates — lies in an appreciation of 
the fact that Egypt and Babylonia could only main- 
tain themselves by successfully holding in check the 



THE STORY OF ASIA MINOR 39 

rugged mountaineers of Asia Minor. Attracted by 
the allurements of a far higher culture than their 
own, the Hittites would be tempted, as their strength 
increased to break through their natural barriers and 
to seek the plains of Mesopotamia and the lowlands 
of Egypt, with Palestine as a natural passageway 
too insignificant ever to unfold any considerable 
power of her own. Once the mountain passes of the 
Anti-Taurus and Amanuo ranges were crossed, there 
was nothing to prevent the rugged mountaineer 
forces from marching along to the Mediterranean 
coast, to Palestine and Egypt, or eastwards to the 
Euphrates — the avenue to both Babylonia in the 
south and to Assyria towards the north. Assyria 
could also be reached by direct routes from eastern 
Asia Minor, following river courses and through 
mountain passes to Diarbekr and thence along the 
Tigris. That this was the actual part played by 
the Hittite groups from very early days down to 
their final dissolution at the close of the eighth 
century before this era, when new forces made their 
appearance in Asia Minor, is shown by Egyptian and 
Babylonian and Assyrian records stretching from 
before 2000 B.C. to the fall of Assyria herself in 606 B.C. 
It is surprising to find that as early as 1900 B.C. 
Hittites actually invaded the Euphrates Valley. 
We have the official record of a Hittite occupying 
at this time the throne of Babylon. The Hittite occupa- 
tion did not last long, but the fact of its having been 
accomplished for a short period shows the power which 
these doughty warriors must have acquired by the 
beginning of the second millenium. The danger 
of an attack from the region to the north and north- 
west of the Euphrates Valley must hava been real- 



40 THE WAR AND THE BAGDAD RAILWAY 

ized by the Babylonian rulers, for we find them 
establishing an outpost against the Hittites as early 
as 2400 B.C. beyond the Anti-Taurus range in what is 
now known as Cappadocia. On this supposition we 
can account for the discovery of numerous cuneiform 
tablets near Csesarea. The contents of these tablets 
are of a business nature. They deal with commer- 
cial transactions, and the language is a kind of 
patois, Babylonian mixed with foreign words that 
will probably turn out to be Hittite. Since they 
are dated after the fashion of Babylonian documents, 
we are in a position to determine their age as ranging 
from about 2400 to 2000 B.C. The proof which they 
furnish of active business transactions between the 
Euphrates Valley and Asia Minor is of the greatest 
value in illustration of trade routes that must have 
been established through the heart of Asia Minor 
at this early period. Trade and war are close bed- 
fellows in antiquity, as they are in modern days. 
Trade in this instance must have been incidental to 
the garrison established by Babylonian rulers at a 
strategic point far north, to ward off an advance 
of Hittites across the mountain passes of the Anti- 
Taurus and the Amanus ranges in the direction of 
the Euphrates Valley — precisely the menace that 
overwhelmed the Euphrates Valley some centuries 
later. The Euphrates Valley could not be held with- 
out the Hinterland, which in itself is the continuation 
of the " Fertile Crescent " that starts at the Persian 
Gulf and stretches in a semi-circle around a desert 
region to the Mediterranean. We accordingly find 
a great conqueror like Sargon I (c. 2700 B.C.), under 
whom the Akkadians (or Semites) gain their first defi- 
nite triumph over the Sumerians, leading his armies 




AN ANCIENT HITTITE AND HIS 
MODERN ARMENIAN DESCENDANT 




MONOLITH OF A HITTITE RULER WITH INSCRIPTION 
(METROPOLITAN MUSEUM) 



THE STORY OF ASIA MINOR 41 

northward and obtaining a firm hold to the shores of 
the Mediterranean. Sargon's predecessors were satis- 
fied with being kings of Sumer and Akkad, 6 com- 
prising the Euphrates Valley, but he and his suc- 
cessors aspire to the grandiloquent title of " King 
of the Four Regions." It was, however, military 
necessity rather than an original greed of conquest 
that led these early rulers to become conquerors and 
to convert their empire into a military power. 

Under such conditions, the destiny of Babylonia 
lay inevitably in the direction of becoming a strong 
military state, with its chief aim to secure control of 
as large a territory as possible to the north and 
northwest, so as to maintain itself against encroach- 
ments of Hittite groups from these directions. When 
Babylonia waxed strong, the Hittites were kept in 
suppression, when it grew weaker, we find the Hit- 
tites acquiring greater strength. A period of decline 
set in in the Euphrates Valley at the end of the eigh- 
teenth century, when the control passes for five cen- 
turies into the hands of a people known as the 
Cassites and whose origin is still doubtful. 

The weakness of Babylonia furnishes the favor- 
able opportunity for the unfolding of greater strength 
in Assyria to the north. The admixture of Hittite 
elements in the population of Assyria stamped As- 
syria as more naturafty warlike from the start than 
Babylonia, but her rulers likewise had to fortify 
themselves against invasions from Asia Minor along 
routes that led along the eastern extremity of that 
region, identical in part with the march of the Rus- 

9 Sumer is the designation of the southern part of the 
Valley, Akkad, to which the Semitic settlers were driven 
back by the Sumerians, the designation of the northern part. 



42 THE WAR AND THE BAGDAD RAILWAY 

sian army in the present war from Trebizond to 
Erzerum southwards in the direction of Mosul — 
opposite which lay Nineveh, the later capital of 
Assyria, and a little to the south Ashur, the older 
capital. Assyria was unable, however, to prevent 
the rise of a powerful Hittite kingdom in northern 
Asia Minor with its centre at Boghaz-Keui, c. 1500 
B.C., and which succeeded in obtaining a dominant 
position over Hittite centres and settlements through- 
out eastern and central Asia Minor and beyond the 
Anti-Taurus range in northern Syria, close to the 
borders of Mesopotamia. 

IV 

Turning to Egypt, we find this region during the 
first period of her most ancient history, the so-called 
Pyramid Age, extending from about 3000 to 2500 
B.C., marked by high achievements in art, notably the 
building of the great pyramids on the outskirts of the 
capital, Memphis. Egypt like Babylonia was a cultural 
power, and as such advanced through peaceable prog- 
ress rather than by the force of arms. Civilizations 
that arise in valleys and in islands do not develop 
military strength, except for purposes of defence; 
they are essentially pacific. The centre of the Egyp- 
tian kingdom was in the north. There were, to be 
sure, encounters with the south, as a natural result 
of the extension of Egyptian culture, but there were 
no attempts at conquest beyond the natural borders. 
It was not till the close of the Feudal Age (c. 2500 to 
1800 b.c), that we find standing armies organized, 
though on a moderate scale, with the help of which 
Nubia was conquered and Palestine, as the coastland 
immediately adjoining Egypt and a natural bulwark, 



THE STORY OF ASIA MINOR 43 

brought under the control of the Pharaohs. An 
entirely different aspect is assumed by Egyptian his- 
tory with a new line of rulers, marked by extraordi- 
nary energy, who come upon the scene about 1600 
B.C. A new capital is established at Thebes, about 
400 miles to the south of Memphis. The change is 
significant as indicative of the larger extent of the 
empire, which brought with it a transfer of the seat 
of government nearer to the centre of the dominion. 
No doubt a contributing factor also in the change 
was the need of a powerful bulwark closer to the 
southern frontier, which at all times needed to be 
protected against attacks from the population in 
central Africa. What led to the decline of the 
Pharaohs of the Feudal Age, so named because of 
the position which the nobles, owning large estates 
under royal agents, acquired, is still a mystery. 
The age was marked by progress in literature, lead- 
ing to collections of papyrus rolls that assumed the 
dimensions of libraries, as well as by an advance 
in ethical standards. Was it perhaps a long period 
of intellectual development that softened the virile 
qualities of the Egyptians so that they fell an easy 
prey to foreigners who seized the throne? 

These are the so-called Hyksos or " shepherd " 
kings, a traditional designation whose identification is 
still a matter of dispute among Egyptologists. The des- 
ignation points to an identification of these invaders 
with the Semitic nomads from Arabia and Palestine 
who at frequent intervals passed into Egypt, 
attracted by the higher civilization, just as the Eu- 
phrates Valley proved a magnet for Bedouin groups 
coming into Babylonia by way of the Euphrates. 
The movement of some of the Hebrew groups into 



44 THE WAR AND THE BAGDAD RAILWAY 

Egypt as depicted by the traditional narratives of 
Genesis furnishes an illustration of such an invasion, 
prompted in part also by economic conditions. 
Large settlements of these Semitic nomads were 
made in the outlying districts of Egypt bordering on 
and near the Red Sea. It is, however, on the face 
improbable that such loosely organized bands, not par- 
ticularly warlike and occupying a grade of culture only 
some degrees removed from primitive conditions, 
should have been capable of taking hold of the gov- 
ernment of Egypt. Some stronger factor must be 
assumed that may have utilized these nomads in a 
serious attack on Egypt. Recalling that as early as 
1900 B.C. the Hittites invaded Babylonia, and that 
Biblical tradition reports the presence of Hittites in 
southern Palestine at this same early date, it is a 
reasonable conjecture that the leaders of the in- 
vasion were the powerful Hittites, who in alliance 
with the nomads wrested the throne of Egypt from 
the native rulers and occupied it for a time until they 
were once more replaced by a native dynasty. 7 

However this may be, we soon find the Pharaohs 
of the new empire turning their faces in the direc- 
tion of Asia, and under Thutmose III (c. 1 500-1450 
b.c.) these efforts at bringing Palestine and the 
Mediterranean coast and northern Syria well into 
the interior of Asia Minor under subjection reached 
their culmination. The motive, however, which 
originally prompted this military policy, was not 
greed of conquest but the necessity of maintaining 
the Egyptian empire unimpaired in her strength — 
the same condition, therefore, that changed Baby- 

7 See Garstang, Land of the Hittites, p. 324, who agrees 
in associating the Hyksos with Hittite influences. 



THE STORY OF ASIA MINOR 45 

Ionia from a naturally pacific to a military power. 
The land of the Nile could not be held without keep- 
ing in check the constant menace of an invasion 
from the north. The coast cities along the Mediter- 
ranean and the interior of Palestine had to be con- 
verted into Egyptian garrisons under the control of 
governors subject to the Pharaohs. Palestine and 
Syria thus became vassal states of Egypt, and this 
step was necessarily followed by an extension of mili- 
tary activities northward and eastward into the strong- 
holds of the Hittites. Success brought with it the en- 
largement of ambitions, and under Thutmose III Egypt 
definitely enters upon a career of military conquest. 

It is not accidental that this new epoch of mili- 
tary activity in Egyptian history is coincident with 
the period when the Hittites reached the height of 
their power under the kingdom which had its centre 
in Boghaz-Keui. The great strength developed by 
the Hittites had to be counterbalanced by the put- 
ting forth of the strongest effort on the part of 
Egypt. This was all the more important because 
Babylonia under the rule of the Cassites was unable 
to hold the Hittites in check, and Assyria in the 
north had not developed sufficient strength to do so. 
In the century following upon Thutmose III, we 
find Assyrian kings taking up the challenge and 
Shalmaneser I succeeds (c. 1300 B.C.) in sweeping 
the Hittites back from the Euphrates. In this 
period we encounter also the first alliances between 
Egypt and Babylonia, reinforced by intermarriages 
between the two courts, in order to present a united 
front against the Hittite forces. 

The reign of Amenhotep IV, or Ikhnaton, famous 
in Egyptian history as a religious reformer, gave the 



46 THE WAR AND THE BAGDAD RAILWAY 

Hittites a breathing spell, for this remarkable ruler 
was more interested in reforms of the cult, in the 
encouragement of the new art, 8 and in other internal 
problems than in extending the sway of Egypt. A 
new line of kings succeeded Ikhnaton that took up 
the former military policy, and under Rameses II 
the crisis in the test of strength with the Hittites 
came. The Hittite ruler Mursil and the Egyptian 
Pharaoh locked arms at Kadesh on the Orontes 
(c. 1295 B.C.). The battle proved to be one of the 
decisive events in ancient history. All portions of 
Asia Minor were represented in the tremendous force 
that Mursil had gathered for the encounter. Rameses 
II, who gives us a detailed account of the battle, 
illustrated by numerous pictured representations, 
on the temple walls at Abu Simbel, at Abydos, at 
Luxor and Karnak, recounts how at first the battle 
went favorably for the Hittites. The king confesses 
that at one stage in the encounter he was in danger 
of being captured. In the end, however, the Egyp- 
tians secured the advantage and, if we may trust 
the Egyptian chronicler, the Hittites were driven off 
the field. Had the fortune of battle gone against 
the Egyptians, a Hittite invasion of Egypt would 
have been inevitable and the course of Egyptian 
history would have been radically changed. As it 
was, the battle of Kadesh merely marked the zenith 
of Hittite power, and Egypt could hereafter breathe 
more freely. Her safety, however, was always de- 
pendent upon her holding as a minimum foreign pos- 
session southern Syria to act as a bulwark against 
Hittite advance. The Hittites under Mursil again 
undertook an offensive against Egypt, aided by 
8 See on this reformer the note on p. 156. 



THE STORY OF ASIA MINOR 47 

Amorites and other groups of Palestine. The tide 
of war flowed and ebbed until c. 1280 B.C., when an 
offensive and defensive treaty between Hattusil, the 
Hittite ruler of Boghaz-Keui, and Rameses II was 
drawn up, of which by a fortunate chance we now have 
both the Egyptian and the Hittite accounts. On the 
temple walls of Karnak Rameses records the fact of the 
reception of the Hittite treaty sent by Hattusil on a 
silver tablet. Some years later, c. 1266 B.C., to further 
mark the friendship now existing between the two 
empires, a Hittite princess was added to the harem 
of Rameses. She was escorted to Egypt by her 
royal father, accompanied by a retinue worthy of so 
extraordinary an occasion. Thus Hittites and 
Egyptians actually met in the Valley of the Nile. 

One is reminded of the jealousies and suspicions 
of modern powers when one reads on cuneiform 
documents of an inquiry directed by the king of 
Babylonia to Hattusil as to the meaning of this 
alliance between Egyptians and Hittites. Was this 
ancient " Entente Cordiale " aimed against the Baby- 
lonian Empire? Hattusil's answer is as diplomati- 
cally correct and non-committal as possible. " The 
King of Egypt and I have made an alliance and have 
become brothers. Brothers we are and will be 
against any common enemy." The implication, 
however, is clear, and Hattusil made use of the situ- 
ation to exert pressure upon Babylonia. Thus the 
game of diplomacy was played thousands of 
years ago. 

The power of Egypt declined with the end of the 
nineteenth dynasty at the turn of the thirteenth cen- 
tury. The succeeding dynasties were occupied with 
protecting themselves against encroachments from 



48 THE WAR AND THE BAGDAD RAILWAY 

the south. Even their hold on Palestine and the 
Phoenician coast was relaxed so as to permit of the 
establishment of an independent state by the 
Hebrews in the interior, and by the Philistines and 
Phoenicians on the coast. We hear no more of 
Egyptian encounters with Hittites to whom freer 
scope was thus given by the decline of the military 
strength of the Empire of the Nile. 

A steady stream of hordes passing into Asia 
Minor brought new groups into the fields that estab- 
lished independent states in the mountain recesses 
and beyond in northern Syria. These come into con- 
flict more particularly with Assyria, whose rulers 
from the twelfth century on find themselves obliged 
to undertake expedition after expedition against one 
group or the other. Now it is a group known as the 
Muski who hold a dominant position over the south- 
ern portions of Asia Minor, now the Phrygian King- 
dom, founded probably by " JE'geans " who passed 
into the interior during the period of Hittite decline 
and who dominated a large portion of the west- 
ern plateau, and some centuries later, newcomers 
across the Caucasus, known as the Cimmerians, who 
overran Asia Minor and put an end to Phrygian 
independence, and against whom the Assyrian rulers 
were obliged to lead their forces in order to maintain 
their own position. Tiglathpileser I (c. 1130-1100 
B.C.) of Assyria is one of the names that looms up 
large in this effort to keep the hordes and groups 
of Asia Minor in check, but though successful in 
part, his successors are unable to prevent the rise 
of a powerful Hittite state in northern Syria with 
Carchemish on the Euphrates as the centre, that 
maintains itself till 717 B.C. when it is finally over- 



THE STORY OF ASIA MINOR 49 

come by Sargon II of Assyria. With this decisive 
event, the way was open to Assyria for the complete 
control of the lands around the Mediterranean. 
Palestine, the Phoenician coast, northern Arabia and 
Egypt fall into Assyria's hands. Ashurbanapal, the 
" Grande Monarque " of Assyria (668-626 B.C.), under 
whom the Assyrian Empire reaches its climax, receives 
the homage of the Lydians, who had established 
an independent kingdom in Asia Minor after the 
overthrow of the Hittites and the Phrygians. The 
removal of the Asia Minor menace was the con- 
dition needed to make Nineveh the mistress of the 
ancient world. 

V 

The earliest history of Asia Minor thus fore- 
shadows the role which the control of the highway 
leading from Constantinople to Bagdad was destined 
to play in subsequent ages down to our own days. 
Asia Minor as the Hinterland to Egypt and Meso- 
potamia forced these empires to become military 
powers in order to secure their position against attacks 
from the north to which they were exposed, though 
what was originally a matter of necessity became 
through the allurements of conquest a growing ambi- 
tion. L'appetit vient en mangeant. 

The position of Babylon, as the capital of the 
united Euphrates states, on the Euphrates, at a point 
where it runs closest to the Tigris, was chosen 
because the Euphrates was the natural avenue along 
which the hordes of Asia Minor after having passed 
through the Cilician gates and the Amanus range 
would swoop down upon the Mesopotamian plain. 
The continuity of the historical relationship of Meso- 
potamia to Asia Minor is well illustrated by the per- 
4 



50 THE WAR AND THE BAGDAD RAILWAY 

sistency of the site, constituting the natural centre 
of the Euphrates Valley. Seleucia (founded by 
Seleucus I in 312 B.C.), the capital in the days of 
Greek occupancy, Ctesiphon in the later Parthian 
period (founded c. 129 B.C.) and Bagdad in Arabian 
times (founded about 763 a.d.) are all within seventy 
miles from Babylon. The only significant change 
brought about by time and different circum- 
stances is the transfer of the capital of the region 
from the banks of the Euphrates to that of the 
Tigris. 9 This was due to the growth of commerce 
which made for a position on the Tigris as the avenue 
of commerce 10 from the Persian Gulf up to the 
northern confines of Assyria. Seleucia was selected 
as the most favorable site on the Tigris, where that 
river runs closest to the Euphrates, so that the capital 
might serve the same purpose as ancient Babylon 
did in being at a strategic point to ward off an attack 
from Asia Minor, while the change from Seleucia to 
Bagdad — only 15 miles apart — appears to have been 
due to a deviation in the course of the Euphrates 
which brought it nearest to the Tigris, at some re- 
move from Seleucia. The choice of Nineveh as the 
capital of Assyria was similarly dictated by strategic 
considerations to offset the Asia Minor menace. 11 

9 Seleucia, 50 miles north of Babylon, lies on the western 
bank of the Tigris, Ctesiphon directly opposite on the eastern 
bank, and Bagdad, 15 miles further north, originally on the 
western bank, but now and for centuries chiefly on the 
eastern bank. 

M The Euphrates is only navigable in parts, and as it 
approaches the Persian Gulf loses itself in swamp and marshes. 

"The older capital at Ashur (represented by the mound 
Kaleh Shergat) is only some 40 miles further south. 



THE STORY OF ASIA MINOR 51 

It lay at the northern limit of navigation on the 
Tigris, which forms the avenue of approach to Mesopo- 
tamia from the eastern end of Asia Minor along the 
routes from Sinope and Trebizond that converge at 
Diarbekr, near the source of both the Tigris and Eu- 
phrates. For Assyria, lying to the north at the out- 
skirts of the Anti-Taurus range, the danger lay in a 
direct attack from the region of Diarbekr. We find 
the Assyrian rulers establishing an outpost at or near 
this point, and placing monuments of themselves there 
with records of their achievements, in order to inspire 
terror among their inveterate enemies in the strong- 
holds of northern and eastern Asia Minor. The 
history of Babylonia and Assyria thus moves along 
the centuries under the shadow of this menace from 
Asia Minor. 

For Egypt, the possession of Palestine formed 
the natural bulwark against the north. We have 
seen that already towards the close of the Feudal 
Age, efforts were directed towards this end which 
culminated in the fifteenth century B.C., in placing 
officials under Egyptian suzerainty in the important 
towns of Palestine, Gaza, Byblos, Sidon and Jerusa- 
lem. All these towns attain their rank because of 
their strategic location. In the reports which these 
governors send to the Pharaohs of existing con- 
ditions, the Hittites are portrayed threatening the 
Egyptian control of Palestine and the coast. These 
troublesome groups appear to have overrun Pales- 
tine, coming down from their mountain strongholds 
across the great highway of Asia Minor that led to 
the plains of northern Syria through the passage 
of the Cilician gates. They intermingle freely with 
the native population — with the Amorites in the 



52 THE WAR AND THE BAGDAD RAILWAY 

north, and with the Canaanitish settlers and the 
semi-nomadic groups further south. The Hebrew 
tradition of Hittites as far south as Hebron 12 at the 
time when the Hebrews first make their appearance 
in the land reflects this state of affairs. The same 
tradition represents Esau as marrying Hittite 
women. 13 True to their warlike character, we find 
Hittites forming a contingent in the Hebrew armies 
of later days. Hebrew chroniclers take it as per- 
fectly natural that among David's followers there 
should be Hittites, like Ahimelech 14 and the unfor- 
tunate Uriah, 15 whose wife Bathsheba arouses 
David's passion and on whom the king practises 
a dastardly deception in order to secure posses- 
sion of the woman. Solomon, the offspring of the 
marriage, may thus himself have been half-Hittite. 
This close association between Hebrew and Hittites, 
as also with the Amorites, must have continued on 
a considerable scale so that centuries afterwards the 
prophet Ezekiel, rebuking the people for their 
boasted superiority, could say of Jerusalem " the 
Amorite was thy father and the Hittite thy mother." 16 
Biblical writers find it necessary to issue a warning 
against intermarriages with Hittites. 17 In the enu- 
meration of the nations of Palestine whom the 
Hebrews found in possession, whom they are called 
upon to exterminate, but whom they never suc- 

12 See note to p. 52 at the end of the volume. 
"Genesis 26, 34. 

"I Samuel 26, 6. It is presumably his son Abiathar, 
who is one of David's priests (I Samuel 30, 7). 
15 II Samuel, Chapters 11-12. 
"Ezekiel, 16, 3. 
17 Deuteronomy, 7, 3. 



THE STORY OF ASIA MINOR 53 

ceeded in entirely driving out, the Hittites are in- 
variably included. The Jebusites who hold the 
heights of Jerusalem till the days of David appear 
to have been Hittites; and it is significant that the 
rise of the Hebrews to power under David and Solo- 
mon (c. 1000-950 b.c.) coincides with the decline of 
Hittite power in Asia Minor through the constant 
encounters with the well-organized armies of the 
Assyrians. While still maintaining their indepen- 
dent existence for another two cenuries, they were 
no longer strong enough to take the offensive nor to 
prevent other hordes from passing into Asia Minor, 
and so the opportunity came for the Hebrews to 
create a kingdom out of tribes that had hitherto been 
joined in a loose confederacy. 

VI 

Passing down the ages we find the Assyrian 
power, exhausted by incessant warfare, succumbing 
to a combination formed against her by Asia Minor 
hordes, abetted by Babylonia, that saw in the down- 
fall of Assyria the possibility of a renewal of her 
own independence. Nineveh fell in 606 B.C. and 
the Neo-Baby Ionian Empire enjoyed a short but 
illustrious respite. Nebopolassar (625-604 B.C.) who 
begins his career as a governor of Babylonia under 
Assyrian suzerainty, makes himself independent 
and hands the throne to his son, the famous Nebu- 
chadnezzar (604-561 B.C.) who is fired with the 
ambition to make himself, in imitation of the Assyr- 
ian rulers, the master of the ancient world. Less 
than forty years after Nebuchadnezzar's death, 
however, a new aspirant to world-conquest appears 



54 THE WAR AND THE BAGDAD RAILWAY 

in Cyrus who, coming from Persia, puts an end to 
the Neo-Babylonian kingdom in 539 B.C. 

It is significant that Cyrus begins his career by 
an expedition to Asia Minor. The powerful king- 
dom in the sixth century in that region was Lydia, 
which succeeded to Phrygia and held a considerable 
part of Asia Minor. The final overthrow of the 
Hittites by Sargon at the close of the eighth cen- 
tury gave the opportunity for other groups to secure 
a dominant position in Asia Minor. The Lydians 
were an Aryan people and possibly, like the Phry- 
gians allied to the iEgeans, some of whom appear 
to have passed inwards from the coast. Cyrus, 
with the instinct of a great general, realizes that the 
conquest of the Hinterland was a necessary con- 
dition to the establishment of an empire in the East. 
Accordingly, he proceeds to Asia Minor and obtains 
the supremacy over this region by the defeat of 
Croesus, King of Lydia, in 546 B.C. His armies pass 
over the historic highway through the Cilician gates, 
along which Ashurbanapal had led his soldiers. 
With this highway safely secured, he has no difficulty 
in conquering Babylonia, which indeed yields to him 
without a struggle in 539 b.c. Palestine also falls 
into his hands, and his successor Cambyses passes 
on in triumph to Egypt. The whole ancient world, 
or at least all of it that seemed worth holding, falls 
at the feet of the Persian rulers who pass from the 
interior of Asia Minor to the coast and cross over 
to Greece, besides taking possession of important 
islands of the ^Egean Sea like Cyprus. At the end 
of the following century (401 b.c.) the younger 
Cyrus, son of Darius II, likewise passes through 
Asia Minor and seizes the Cilician gates as a pre- 



THE STORY OF ASIA MINOR 55 

liminary to an attempt to wrest the empire of the 
east from out of the hands of his elder brother 
Artaxerxes II. Cyrus was slain in the battle of 
Cunaxa, on the Euphrates, and soon thereafter the 
famous retreat of the " Ten Thousand " Greeks in 
the army of Cyrus through Asia Minor begins, to 
end successfully, after many hardships, at Trebi- 
zond on the Black Sea. 

VII 

Two centuries later the Persian Empire is threat- 
ened by a new force which likewise advances from 
the north. A new epoch in the world's history 
begins with the exploits of Alexander the Great 
(334-3 2 3 B -c), who, after subduing Greece, begins 
his eastern campaigns at the northwestern corner of 
Asia Minor. On the river Granicus he defeats the 
Persian army that attempted to impede his passage. 
He passes along the same historic highway, on a 
route largely identical with the course of the Bag- 
dad Railway, and emerging through the Cilician 
gates encounters the vast force which Darius had 
gathered at Issus. There he wins one of the decisive 
battles of the world's history. Master of Asia Minor, 
Alexander repeats the exploits of his Persian prede- 
cessors. Palestine and Egypt acknowledge his rule. 
He passes on to Mesopotamia, and after another 
sharp and victorious encounter with an army of 
Darius at Arbela, not far from Nineveh, the land of 
Assyria and Babylonia is added to his Empire. 

The possession of Asia Minor is also the key to 
India. Alexander, whose ambition passes beyond 
the dreams of former conquerors, marches on to the 
river Indus, and is only checked in his progress by 



56 THE WAR AND THE BAGDAD RAILWAY 

the opposition of his troops against a further advance. 
Still occupied with schemes of further conquest, he 
dies in Babylon by a strange fate in the huge palace 
which Nebuchadnezzar had erected for himself, 
with its terraced gardens, giving the impression of 
" hanging gardens," that were hailed as one of the 
wonders of the age. 

Dissensions that broke out among Alexander's 
generals after his death led to a division of the vast 
empire. Seleucus (323-281 B.C.), who obtained 
Mesopotamia as his share, succeeded in bringing 
under his authority the entire eastern part of Alex- 
ander's Empire as far as the Jaxartes and Indus. 
It was evident, however, that Seleucus could not 
hold Mesopotamia without the Hinterland to the 
north and northwest, and so we find him and his 
successors striving for the possession of Asia Minor. 
At Ipsus in Asia Minor a decisive victory is won by 
Seleucus in 301 over his antagonist Antigonus, and 
with the Hinterland sufficiently secured to prevent 
an attack from this region, Syria and eventually 
Palestine and the coast towns fall under the Seleu- 
cid dynasty. Yet it was again from the north that 
the dominions of the Seleucids were threatened. In 
278 B.C. the Gauls breaking into Asia Minor menaced 
the "Fertile Crescent," as the Hittites had done in 
their day. Antiochus I successfully blocked their 
advance and won for himself the title of soter, i.e., 
" savior." It is significant that by driving the enemy 
out of Asia Minor, he is supposed to have saved the 
East. In the division of Alexander's conquests 
Egypt fell to the share of Ptolemy (323-283 B.C.) 
and a rivalry naturally ensued between the Ptole- 
mies and the Seleucids. The former felt the need 



THE STORY OF ASIA MINOR 57 

of holding Palestine as a bulwark, precisely as in the 
days of the Pharaohs, while the latter could content 
themselves generally, though not always, with acting 
on the defensive against Egypt, with the northern 
and eastern part of the " Fertile Crescent " in their 
control, backed by the Hinterland. Palestine became 
a ball tossed now to the Ptolemies, now to the 
Seleucids, until in the days of Antiochus III, sur- 
named the Great (223-187 B.C.), the Seleucids se- 
cured a more permanent possession of it, and proceed 
to the invasion of Egypt. The reign of this Antiochus 
represents both the climax of the Seleucid dynasty and 
the beginning of its decline. Once more the die is cast 
in Asia Minor. This region had been lost to the 
Seleucids in the reign of Seleucid II (246-227 B.C.), 
partly through internal dissension, and in part 
through the rise to power of the Pergamon Kingdom 
in the northwestern part of Asia Minor and which 
under its ruler, Attalus I (241-197 B.C.), had become 
a formidable rival. 

The decline of Greek rule in the East thus begins 
with the loosening of the hold upon Asia Minor, as 
illustrated more particularly by the rise of the Per- 
gamon Kingdom. The Romans with a shrewd 
recognition of the importance of obtaining a foot- 
hold in Asia Minor as the starting-point for the 
development of a Provincia Asia allied themselves 
with the new kingdom. Through this Roman policy, 
the rulers of Pergamon added to their dominions 
most of western and a part of central Asia Minor. 18 
The capital, Pergamon, became one of the most 
magnificent cities of the East, but only to fall into 
the hands of the Romans on the death of Attalus III 

" Phrygia, Lydia, Pisidia, Lycaonia and Pamphylia become 
subject to Pergamon. 



58 THE WAR AND THE BAGDAD RAILWAY 

in 133 b.c. This marks the advent of Roman suprem- 
acy in the East. Pergamon retained its position 
for a long time as the focusing point of military and 
commercial routes of Asia Minor, traces of which 
are still to be seen. From holding western Asia 
Minor, Roman domination gradually spread until 
under Pompey (64 b.c.) the entire region became sub- 
ject to Rome, though certain provinces were permitted 
to retain a nominal independence. 

Since Alexander's days, however, Asia Minor had 
become thoroughly Hellenized through the infusion 
of Greek civilization. So strong was this impress 
as to efface the traces of the old Hittite culture 
completely. Only the ruins of buildings and the 
rock sculptures remained to tell the tale of the earlier 
days. Roman influence is to be seen in the building 
and improvement of new roads through the country, 
and in the erection of aqueducts as well as of garri- 
sons with strong fortifications at strategic points. 
The Greek spirit made for culture, the Roman for the 
unfolding of strength, but through both commerce 
was encouraged and followed in the wake of the 
Greek and Roman occupation. Greek settlements 
in Asia Minor can be followed by traces of the theatre 
which formed a focus of Greek intellectual life. The 
Romans, true to their genius, added the amphi- 
theatre for gladitorial contests of strength. 

VIII 
Holding Asia Minor firmly, Rome fell heir to the 
ancient civilizations of Egypt, Palestine and Meso- 
potamia. Until the end of the sixth century she 
remained the undisputed mistress of the East. Her 
weakness began to show itself, however, by the 
increasing difficulties she encountered in holding the 



THE STORY OF ASIA MINOR 59 

pole at the one end of the historic highway — at the 
Persian Gulf. She reversed the position that had 
hitherto prevailed, for the Persians strongly en- 
trenched at the southern end of the highway, stretch- ' 
ing from Constantinople to the Persian Gulf, were 
weak in their hold of the northern end. A general 
of Darius Hystaspes held Byzantium for a while, 
but the Greeks succeeded, c. 478 B.C., in regaining a 
hold on the important site, the foundation of which 
goes back to the seventh century b.c. During Greek 
supremacy of the East, the same conditions pre- 
vailed. The Seleucidian rulers were always strong 
in their control of the region of the Persian Gulf, 
but weakest in their hold of the other pole. Follow- 
ing the example set by Alexander, his successors 
devoted themselves to the maintenance of the net- 
work of canals of the Euphrates and Tigris, which 
constituted one of the greatest achievements of the 
older rulers of Babylonia. 

Babylonia is the gift of the two rivers of Meso- 
potamia, as Egypt is the gift of the Nile. In both 
regions a high order of civilization developed as a 
result of the favorable conditions under which agri- 
culture could be carried on in lowlands through 
artificial irrigation. The partnership between nature 
and man thus produced the culture and wealth 
of Mesopotamia. Nature provided the soil, man 
directed the outflow of the rivers through canals and 
irrigation ditches into the fields, changing the curse 
of an annual deluge into the blessings of the fields. 
Under Persian and Greek rulers this system of irri- 
gation requiring constant supervision was main- 
tained, and Babylonia retained her position, though 
under foreign rule. Rome, on the other hand, 
strongly entrenched herself at the northern pole of 



60 THE WAR AND THE BAGDAD RAILWAY 

the current stretching across Asia Minor, but neg- 
lected the other pole. Byzantium as the capital of 
the Eastern Roman Empire, changing its name to 
Constantinople in 330 a.d., became a mighty bulwark, 
ensuring Roman control of the highway up to the 
Cilician gates, but in order to hold the plains and 
regions beyond — the " Fertile Crescent " — the grasp 
on the other pole should have been equally firm. 
Her failure to do so was a fatal error. Hinterland 
and " Fertile Crescent " stand and fall together. An 
empire in the East requires firm possession of both 
as the condition of permanence. The force of the 
Roman power, so tenacious where its energy was at 
its height, appears to have spent itself by the time it 
had reached Mesopotamia. 

It is significant that Pompey was unable to sup- 
press the Parthian Empire, founded by Mithridates I 
(c. 170-138 B.C.), which succeeded in wresting Baby- 
lonia from Seleucidian rulers ; and though this Par- 
thian Empire never attained to the position of the old 
Persian Empire, of which it claimed to be the con- 
tinuation, it retained possession of Mesopotamia 
against Roman attempts to seize it, though finally 
obliged in the days of Augustus to recognize a nom- 
inal Roman suzerainty. In 226 a.d. the Arsacid 
rulers were forced to submit to Ardashir I, a descend- 
ant of Sasan, from whom these rulers derived their 
designation as Sassanians. This new power, orig- 
inating in Persia, represents a genuine revival of the 
national Iranian element. It maintained itself till 
the middle of the seventh century when the rise of 
the Arabs put an end to it. During this period con- 
flicts between the Sassanian rulers and the Eastern 
Roman Empire took place almost incessantly. The 
prize for which the Sassanians fought was northern 



THE STORY OF ASIA MINOR 61 

Mesopotamia (which had remained in Roman hands) 
and Asia Minor. The tide of war flowed and ebbed 
during the following centuries but without a decisive 
issue, because neither the Emperors of Byzantium 
nor the Sassanians, holding southern Mesopotamia, 
were able to control the entire stretch of the highway 
across Asia Minor. Finally, at the beginning of the 
seventh century Chosroes II penetrated as far as 
Chalcedon, opposite Constantinople, and by virtue of 
this success, was, for a short period, master of the East. 
During the rule of the Parthians and Sassanians, 
moreover, Mesopotamia lost much of her former 
strength and prosperity owing to the state of neglect 
into which the canal system had been allowed to fall. 
The greater interest of the rulers lay in the region 
to the east of the Tigris. Although they continued 
to reside in Ctesiphon, on the Tigris, the chief monu- 
ments of their reigns are to be found in Persia. The 
Iranian character of the empire, thus emphasized, 
became the source of its strength, but its rise to a 
world power would only have been possible had the 
rulers recognized the region adjacent to the Persian 
Gulf as the prop of their empire. With only an 
indifferent hold on this region and allowing it to fall 
into decay, they could not avail themselves of their 
temporary success in controlling Asia Minor up to 
Constantinople. A few years after Chosroes II had 
secured Chalcedon, the counter movement began 
and by 627 a.d. the Eastern Emperor Heraclius had 
driven the Sassanians back to the Persian Gulf. 

IX 

The long-continued struggle between Rome and 
Persia for the possession of Asia Minor as the key 
to the East thus ended in enfeebling both empires, 



62 THE WAR AND THE BAGDAD RAILWAY 

and making room for a force of an entirely different 
character that emerges from a region whence one 
least expected it — Arabia. Mohammed, the Apostle 
of Allah (c 570-632 a.d.), founds the religion of Islam, 
and inspiring the scattered Arab tribes also with a 
national ideal unites them into a solid mass. Under 
remarkably able generals, Arabic armies pour forth 
out of Arabia to win the world for the propagation 
of the gospel of their prophet. The region of the 
Persian Gulf marks their first conquest, and Con- 
stantinople at the other end their goal. Within a 
year of Mohammed's death, the Moslem hosts make 
their appearance in southern Mesopotamia and put 
an end to the Sassanian Empire. Palestine and 
Egypt fall into their hands. The necessity, however, 
of holding the Hinterland also in order to maintain 
an Arab Empire is recognized by their leaders. 
Under the banner of the prophet, Islam forces its 
way through Asia Minor, and in 668 a.d. Constanti- 
nople was besieged by the Arabs and again in the 
year 674. Had the Arabs, who now held the one 
pole at the Persian Gulf, succeeded in capturing and 
retaining Constantinople in their hands, the entire 
East would have remained at their mercy. The 
check which they received in France through Charles 
Martel at Tours in 732 a.d. is generally regarded as 
marking the definite limitation to Arabic advance. 
It had this result merely because the Arabs failed 
to keep the two poles, across which ran the highway 
the possession of which meant the sway over the 
East. The real failure of Islam was in the East. 
The Arabs were forced back from the gates of Con- 
stantinople, and another attempt in 718 to take 
Constantinople was successful for a short time only. 
In contrast to the Romans who held Constantinople 



THE STORY OF ASIA MINOR 63 

at the one end of the chain but could not maintain 
the other, the Arabs held the region of the Persian 
Gulf but not the other. For this reason the build- 
ing up of a great united Arabic empire commanding 
the East was impossible. Portions of Asia Minor 
along the main roads were in their possession, but 
never the whole of it. The Eastern Empire kept 
its hand on the northwestern end. 

The conquests of the Arabs carried out with such 
remarkable rapidity soon split up into groups. In- 
stead of a central authority in Mecca, rival caliphates 
arose in Mesopotamia, Egypt and Spain. The 
strongest of these was the one which had its seat 
in Bagdad founded by the Caliph Mansur in 763 a.d., 
close by the site of Ctesiphon and not far from ancient 
Babylon. A glorious day dawned once more for 
this time-honored region which reached its high- 
noon in the days of Harun al-Rashid (786-809 a.d.), 
but again we note the fateful verdict of history that 
without the control of the Hinterland, sharply defined 
limitations are prescribed to the extension of any 
Mesopotamian power. The caliphs of Bagdad could 
not regain Egypt, nor could they always quell dis- 
turbances in Syria. Realizing the importance of Asia 
Minor in order to make their own position secure, 
the Abbasid rulers of Bagdad made frequent expe- 
ditions in that direction. In the year 833 a.d., it 
looked as though the ambition to hold Constanti- 
nople would be finally realized. With such success 
had the caliph Mamun penetrated into the heart of 
Asia Minor that the Byzantine Emperor Theophilus 
sued for peace. Mamun refused the offer, and death 
alone prevented him from carrying out his design to 
seize the capital of the Eastern Roman Empire. 
It was the last effort of the kind. In another cen- 



64 THE WAR AND THE BAGDAD RAILWAY 

tury a new force came to the front in Asia Minor 
which, while it postponed the downfall of the East- 
ern Roman Empire, also blocked the Arabic advance. 
Nor was it long before it gathered sufficient strength 
to threaten both the Arabs and the Emperors at Con- 
stantinople. These new aspirants for control of Asia 
Minor with the ambition to secure both poles of the 
current were the Turks. 

X 

Asia Minor, we have seen, was destined by her 
geographical position to be at the mercy of hordes 
pouring into the region from time immemorial from 
Central Asia. Wave after wave surges across the 
Caucasus or by a more direct route. It was thus 
that the Hittites came, and possibly the ^Egeans, 
the Cimmerians and other hordes, while the Gauls 
came across the Hellespont, — and now the region is 
threatened by two other motley groups — the Turks 
and the Mongols. Into the ethnic problem sug- 
gested by these new invaders we need not enter. An 
ultimate connection between the two seems probable, 
but as they come upon the horizon of history they 
appear quite distinct, the Turks being far more capa- 
ble of assimilating the culture of the region into 
which they came or were driven, than the Mongols, 
who appear more in the light of raiders, and after 
accomplishing their purpose pass back to whence 
they came. The Turks are the first to appear. 

We hear of them towards the middle of the sixth 
century of our era occupying a district on the Oxus 
and victorious over opponents. In the following 
century they assist the Byzantine Emperor Herac- 
lius (610-641 a.d.) in his campaigns against the Sas- 
sanian empire. Splitting up into smaller groups their 



V 







.;%..^ft 









PRIMITIVE IRRIGATION IN MESOPOTAMIA 




THE PORTAL AT NIGDEH. SELYUK ART. (C. 1223 A.D.) 



THE STORY OF ASIA MINOR 65 

trend is westward, and they gradually spread over a 
large region. A branch advances into Asia Minor, 
driven perhaps by waves behind it. This advance guard 
becomes known as the Seljuk Turks, though the name 
does not appear till the eleventh century, when we 
find them firmly established in Asia Minor and in 
control of most of it, as far east as Cappadocia and 
south to Cilicia. In 1071 they defeat the Byzantine 
Emperor, and in 1080 take Nicaea which brings them 
close to the Bosphorus. 

The Seljuk Turks had become Moslems as had 
other branches of the Turks when coming into con- 
tact with Arabs and Persians. They thus added to 
the strength of Mohammedan control of the East. 
We find them spreading in all directions until by the 
thirteenth century there was scarcely any part of the 
Nearer East in which Turks were not to be found, 
serving as mercenaries or otherwise engaged in the 
service of the various caliphates. The sultans of 
Rum, as the dominion of the Seljuk Turks in Asia 
Minor came to be called, with their capital at Ico- 
nium (modern Konia) were patrons of art, and 
remains of Seljuk constructions in Asia Minor testify 
to the distinction and grace acquired by this branch of 
the Turkish race in architecture and decoration. 

But while Turks thus commingled with the sub- 
jects of the Arabic caliphates, they never formed a 
union with them and contributed rather to the further 
splitting up of Asia Minor and the region of the 
" Fertile Crescent " into independent sections. The 
Abbasid caliphs were left in possession of their 
authority, though the Seljuk Sultans were the mas- 
ters of the situation. They held Syria and threat- 
ened Egypt at various times. On the other hand, the 
5 



66 THE WAR AND THE BAGDAD RAILWAY 

Seljuk Turks, though a constant menace to the 
Byzantine Empire, lacked the background necessary 
to the establishment of a strong world empire in 
the East. The control of Asia Minor by the Seljuk 
Turks, moreover, coincides with the age of the 
Crusades, which begins in 1096 and continues till 
1291, when the last of the strongholds on the Phoe- 
nician coast fell into Moslem hands. This long- 
continued attempt on the part of Christian Europe 
to secure possession of the Land illustrates again 
the thesis suggested by the history of Asia Minor, 
that without this region no grasp on the Near East 
can be effective. 

XI 

On the surface, the Crusades were undertaken 
to rescue the Holy Sepulchre and other sites sacred 
to Christians out of Moslem hands, but their deeper 
significance lies in the endeavor that they represent 
to save the Near East for Christendom. Despite the 
split between Eastern and Western Christendom, 
the Western Crusaders in reality came to the aid of 
the Byzantine Empire, and while the Crusades failed 
ultimately in their purpose, they, like the coming 
of the Turks, postponed the downfall of Constanti- 
nople for two centuries and more. It has been prop- 
erly pointed out that the Crusades can only be under- 
stood when considered as a part of Eastern History, 19 
more particularly of that part of the East covered by 
Asia Minor and those countries for which it forms 
the Hinterland. The Crusades represent a struggle 
for possession of the East, precisely of the same 
order as the various struggles which we have rapidly 

19 So by Stevenson in his admirable work, The Crusaders in 
the East (Cambridge, 1907). 



THE STORY OF ASIA MINOR 67 

set forth in this survey of the salient features of the 
history of the highway from Constantinople to the 
Persian Gulf. The religious motive underlying the 
Crusades does not offset their real meaning when 
viewed from the broader standpoint of human his- 
tory as largely dominated by three factors, climate, 
geographical position and economic pressure, or 
the reaction from such pressure. The recovery of 
holy sites is an incidental feature of the Crusades. 
The essential feature is the endeavor to secure the 
Near East as necessary for the normal development 
of the West in all directions — in commerce, in relig- 
ious thought, in cultural stimulus, in art and even 
in science. 

The Crusades are, therefore, a part of the " trend 
towards the East " which has always been a motive 
power in western lands and has in our own days 
given rise to the Bagdad Railway as its latest mani- 
festation. The course that the Crusades take, like- 
wise furnishes another illustration of the impossibil- 
ity of holding Palestine — the goal of the religious 
hosts — without the Hinterland. Strange and yet 
natural that the first battles of the Crusades should 
be waged in Asia Minor. Nicaea falls into their 
hands in June, 1097, Antioch in June, 1098, and 
Jerusalem in July, 1099. A Latin Kingdom was estab- 
lished amidst great enthusiasm with Godfrey of 
Bouillon as King. It lasted amid great difficulties 
till 1 187, when Jerusalem was captured by Sultan 
Saladin. The surprise is that it endured so long, 
for surrounded as the Crusaders were by enemies, 
no power could possibly be established in Palestine 
with Asia Minor still held largely by the Seljuk 
Turks, and the rest of it broken up into little states. 



68 THE WAR AND THE BAGDAD RAILWAY 

The dissensions among the Crusaders were no doubt 
a factor in leading to the weakness of their hold on 
other centres like Antioch and Edessa, which were 
made the capitals of little principalities, but the main 
reason for their failure was the lack of the Hinterland. 
They passed through Asia Minor but never held it. 
A Latin control was effected for a time at Con- 
stantinople from 1204 to 1261, but this victory over 
the Greek element in the Byzantine Empire was of 
little avail, with the highway that starts opposite 
Constantinople in control of Moslem groups, or at 
the mercy of the hordes that again began to pour into 
the region from Central Asia. 

The Seljuk Turks, as well as other branches that 
had established themselves in Syria, Khorassan, Kar- 
man, Irak and up to Afghanistan and had made them- 
selves independent, were all swept away by the surge 
of a Mongol invasion under Jenghis Khan in 1219. 
History repeats itself once more in the manner in 
which Jenghis Khan and his successors overrun Asia 
Minor, and then obtain possession of the lands lying 
beyond the Cilician gates and the Amanus range. 
The Bagdad caliphate falls before the attack of 
Hulagu Khan, the brother of Jenghis, in 1258. 
Syria and Palestine yield to the invader two years 
later and Egypt is threatened. 

XII 

The tide is turned through a fortunate chance 
which brings another branch of the Turkish race to 
the front. In 1227 a horde of several thousand 
Turks are driven from their settlements in Khoras- 
san through the pressure of the Mongol invasion. 
They first seek refuge near Erzerum and afterwards 



THE STORY OF ASIA MINOR 69 

pass on towards Angora, under the leadership of 
Ertoghrul. These are the Ottoman, or, perhaps 
more properly, the Osmanli Turks who become the 
founders of the present Turkish Empire. They 
take their name from Osman or Othman, 20 the son 
of Ertoghrul. Ertoghrul and his followers come 
to the aid of the Seljuk Turks and near Angora 
(1260 a.d.) inflict a crushing blow on Hulagu, who 
in view of the menace abandons the attempt to 
advance to Egypt and hurries back to the north. 
The Mongol generals left in command in Syria are 
defeated by Sultan Kutuz of Egypt about the same 
time that the forces of the Greeks and the Mongols 
under Hulagu are pursued to the Hellespont. The 
danger of the Mongolian invasion had passed, but 
it is again significant that it is their defeat in Asia 
Minor which decides the fate of the East. The 
victory being due to Ertoghrul, he receives as his 
reward the district around Eskishehr (ancient Dory- 
laeum) in the northwest of Asia Minor. With this 
as a starting-point, the power of the Ottoman Turks 
develops under Osman (1 289-1 326) and his succes- 
sors, Orkhan (1 326-1 359), Murad I (1 359-1 389), and 
Bayezid (1389-1403), to a commanding position in 
the East, though not as yet dominant. They de- 
voted their efforts towards obtaining control of the 
region in northwestern Asia Minor up to the Bos- 
phorus. In 1338 they reach Haidar Pasha directly 
opposite Constantinople, and the starting-point of 
the Bagdad Railway. It should always be remem- 
bered that the foothold of the Turks in Europe was 

20 According to H. A. Gibbons, The Foundation of the 
Ottoman Empire (New York, 1916), p. 6, Osman is the pro- 
nunciation in Constantinople, Othman in Asia Minor. 



70 THE WAR AND THE BAGDAD RAILWAY 

secured through the court quarrels at Constanti- 
nople, which led John Cantacuzenus who had himself 
proclaimed Emperor, to call in the aid of Orkhan 
against Anna, the widow of Andronicus III, whose 
counsellor Cantacuzenus had been. This was in 1341. 
In a few years the Ottomans aid in capturing Adria- 
nople, which becomes the capital of the Ottoman 
Empire in 1367. Thrace falls into their hands, Mace- 
donia is colonized by Moslems, and by the end of 
the fourteenth century they hold a preponderant 
position in the Balkan Peninsula. The Balkan ques- 
tion which was the immediate cause for the war of 
1914 thus takes its rise over five centuries ago. 

The victory of Murad at Kossovo in 1389 puts an 
end to Serbian independence. Under Bayezid, raids 
are made into Hungary. Constantinople is besieged 
in 1391 and again in 1395, and Bayezid defeats a force 
composed of the best European chivalry, co-operating 
with Sigismund of Hungary, at Nicopolis in Bulgaria 
in 1396. Greece is invaded in the following year. 
But while the Osmanli were thus making them- 
selves the peers of the Byzantine Empire in Europe, 
they were neglecting to strengthen themselves in 
Asia Minor. Content with holding a small section 
of it, the remainder was split up into a large num- 
ber of independent states or Emirates. 21 It is not 
until the reign of Bayezid that we find an attempt 
made to put an end to this condition by a vigorous 
campaign which, beginning in 1392, lasted for several 
years but only resulted in obtaining possession of the 
northern part of Asia Minor. Whether due to the 

21 See Appendix B to Gibbons' work, Foundation of the 
Ottoman Empire, who gives a full list of such states, and adds 
an interesting summary of the results of his investigation of 
the state of Asia Minor during the fourteenth century. 



THE STORY OF ASIA MINOR 71 

feeling of security inspired by the final defeat of the 
Latin Crusaders in 1291, or to a reliance on the 
Moslemization of Asia Minor as a guarantee against 
dangers from this side, the policy of the Ottoman 
Turks in striking for the control of Eastern Europe 
instead of making themselves masters of Asia Minor 
was a fatal error, which came near resulting in their 
complete extinction through another Mongol in- 
vasion, as terrific in its onslaught as the previous one 
under Jenghis Khan. 

The leader was Timur, who after a remarkable 
sweep which brought a wide stretch from western 
India to Armenia and which included Persia, Meso- 
potamia and the steppes between the Black and 
Caspian seas under subjection, between 1399 and 
1402 overran Asia Minor and made Bayezid his 
prisoner. By the irony of fate the decisive defeat 
of Bayezid took place at Angora — the strategic 
point where the Ottomans 140 years previous had 
gained their first victory which started them on their 
career. By the end of 1402 when Smyrna fell into 
his hands, Timur had established his position as the 
heir of the Ottoman Empire. He is hailed by Chris- 
tian Europe as the savior of Europe from Moslem 
domination, and the hope is expressed by Henry IV 
of England that he may by conversion to Christian- 
ity become the champion of the Cross. But Timur, 
like Jenghis Khan, was after all a raider rather than 
an invader. The Mongols, in contrast to the Turks, 
left no indelible impress of their astonishingly rapid 
conquests beyond the work of destruction in their 
wake. There was no constructive element in either 
of the Mongolian invasions, and having finished his 
work of destruction Timur leaves Asia Minor as 



72 THE WAR AND THE BAGDAD RAILWAY 

suddenly as he came, and dies in 1405 while on his 
way to further raids upon China. 

XIII 

Had Timur followed up his defeat of Bayezid 
by an effort at organization, the empire of the Otto- 
mans would have disappeared, or had the states of 
Christian Europe availed themselves of the inter- 
regnum (1403-1413) between the defeat of Bayezid 
and the revival of Ottoman power under Moham- 
med I, a son of Bayezid (1413-1421), to restore the 
Eastern Roman Empire — now reduced to a pitiful 
extreme — the history of the world might have taken 
a different turn. Instead, after the sudden departure 
of Timur, the Emperor Manuel Palaeologus appeals 
to Mohammed I who had established himself at 
Brusa, for aid against another son of Bayezid, who 
after seizing Adrianople laid siege to Constanti- 
nople. Mohammed defeats his brother Mussa in 
1413, and before his death succeeds in regaining all 
the territory over which his father had ruled — an 
amazing renaissance, indicative of the recuperative 
powers of the Turks. The Turkish navy was organ- 
ized in his days as an adjunct to the army. Moham- 
med I carries out a more energetic policy in strength- 
ening his hold on Asia Minor. His son and succes- 
sor Murad II (1421-1451) 22 continues this policy, 
and it is not until he knows the Hinterland to be 
secure that he felt free to direct in person the further 
conquest of Europe. Salonica is taken in 1428, fur- 
ther advances are made into Servia and Hungary but 
are checked by troubles that had broken out in Asia 

22 Murad II abdicated in 1444 in favor of his son (then 
only 14 years old), but was forced by turbulent conditions to 
resume his throne. 



THE STORY OF ASIA MINOR 73 

Minor. After his son Mohammed II (1451-1481) 
had finally succeeded in quelling the revolts that were 
constantly breaking out, the final act in the drama 
of the contest between Cross and Crescent that had 
been going on for centuries was staged by the tak- 
ing of Constantinople on the 20th of May, 1453. The 
last Byzantine Emperor, Constantine Palaeologus, 
fell among the defenders of the last bulwark. 

The taking of Constantinople is one of the de- 
cisive events in history, because it symbolizes the 
final triumph of the Crescent in the East. The dura- 
bility of this triumph is illustrated by the futility 
of all efforts during the succeeding centuries down 
to our days to change the aspect of the Near East 
as a Mohammedan possession, which even the ener- 
getic missionary efforts of the various bodies of the 
Christian church, praiseworthy and useful as they 
have been in promoting education, have been unable 
to affect to any material extent. The reason for 
this is once more to be sought in the possession 
of the highway stretching across Asia Minor which, 
after the definite control of the one end by the Otto- 
mans, was gradually made equally firm at the other 
end — at the Persian Gulf. Before Mohammed II 
passed away, Asia Minor had been completely sub- 
jugated, and under his successor, Selim I (1512- 
1520), Persia, Hindustan, Egypt, Syria and the coast- 
line of Arabia became part of the Turkish Empire. 
The control of the Hinterland made the Ottoman 
Sultans masters of the East — precisely as this con- 
trol had been a decisive factor ever since the days 
of antiquity. The rise of the Ottoman Turks to the 
rank of a world-power having been thus brought 
about by the firm grasp of the historic highway, its 
permanency was conditioned upon maintaining its 



74 THE WAR AND THE BAGDAD RAILWAY 

hold. Once more we note that the key to the East- 
ern situation lies not in the Balkan Peninsula nor 
in the possession of Constantinople, but in the stra- 
tegic character of the route connecting Constanti- 
nople with Bagdad — as illustrated by the constant 
repetition of events, though under changed outward 
circumstances from the times of Mursil, the Hittite, 
in the middle of the thirteenth century before this 
era to Mohammed II, the Osmanli Turk in the mid- 
dle of the fifteenth century of our era — an astonishing 
example of historical continuity for over 2700 years, as 
a result of the geographical position of Asia Minor. 

The taking of Constantinople, marking the con- 
trol of the highway of which it forms the starting- 
point, meant the raising of an impassable barrier 
to the East, erected against any further efforts of 
Christian and Western Europe to break through it. 
The year 1453 marks the real end of the Crusades, 
viewed in their broader historical significance as the 
endeavor to save the access to the East for Europe. 
A direct consequence of the capture of Constanti- 
nople was the stimulus given to navigation to find a 
new route to the East by sea. Columbus sailed west 
in the hope of making good by a water route to India 
what had been lost through the failure of the Crusades 
to keep the land highway to the East open to western 
nations. A new continent is discovered by accident 
in the search for this route in 1492, and the Cape 
of Good Hope is rounded by Vasco da Gama in 
1477 in the endeavor to find a more direct sea 
route to the East. The " trend towards the East," 
manifesting itself in such a variety of forms, appears 
to be an ineradicable longing that the West received 
when it fell heir to the high culture that arose in 



THE STORY OF ASIA MINOR 75 

the ancient East. The "call of the East" still 
resounds in the ears of contemporary Europe, and 
America. It is the impelling force behind commer- 
cial exploitation and the construction of railways 
to the East. So closely intertwined is the fate of the 
West upon access to the East that the taking of Con- 
stantinople leads to the discovery of America. One 
is inclined to put it strongly that after the closing up of 
the highway across Asia Minor, there was nothing for 
Columbus to do but to discover America — and he did it. 

XIV 

The Ottoman rulers, however, failed to recognize 
that their position in the world depended upon their 
being and remaining an eastern power. In their 
endeavors to become also a western power, they 
sinned, as it were, against their own destiny and 
brought about the downfall of a great empire. They 
tried like Janus to face in both directions, instead 
of keeping their gaze steadily turned toward the 
East. Actuated by ambitions to overstep natural 
barriers to their extension, they became, as has 
always been the inevitable fate of attempts at world 
power, a menace to the world. 

The height of the Turkish Empire was reached 
in the reign of Suleiman I (i 520-1 566), whose sur- 
name " the Magnificent " symbolizes the climax 
attained. Belgrade was captured in 1521, Budapest 
in 1528. The gates of Vienna are reached in 1529, 
and Suleiman prepared for a contest at arms with 
the Emperor Charles V. The Moslemization of 
Europe seemed imminent, and when Suleiman died 
in 1566, the Turkish Empire extended close to the 
frontiers of Germany. 

The decline may be dated from the battle of 



76 THE WAR AND THE BAGDAD RAILWAY 

Lepanto in October, 1571, when Don John of Austria 
destroyed the menace of the Turkish fleet, which had 
secured control of the African coast to Morocco and 
had endangered Italy, Spain and France. Worn out 
by almost continuous wars in Europe and the sup- 
pression of revolts in Asia Minor and Persia for a 
stretch of over thirty years, the Turks concluded 
a peace at Sitvatorok (in Hungary) in November, 
1606, which put an end to their period of conquest. 
From now on, the efforts of the Ottoman Sultans are 
directed towards maintaining their dominions with 
a steady decline of their power in Europe, though it 
was not until well towards the close of the eigh- 
teenth century that the defensive power of the Em- 
pire was broken to the extent of forcing upon her 
onerous terms of peace. The treaty of Kutchuk 
Kainarji (in Bulgaria) signed in July, 1774, between 
Russia and Turkey marks another turning-point 
which definitely gave to Russia the ascendancy. In 
1792 the Crimea was added to Russia by the treaty 
of Jassy. The next century saw the struggle of 
Turkey to retain possession of the states of the 
Balkan Peninsula, with the gradual loss of one after 
the other until her European possessions were re- 
duced to the comparatively small corner at the 
southeastern extremity, which now represents all 
that is left of what was once a formidable dominion. 
But Turkey was still an Eastern power after hav- 
ing been shorn of her European possessions. De- 
spite uprisings and revolts in Persia and Syria and 
Egypt, she had managed to retain her control of the 
Nearer East by holding the highway across Asia 
Minor. During the seventeenth century, however, 
her hold on the one end at the Persian Gulf was 
loosened. She was forced to make a supreme effort 



THE STORY OF ASIA MINOR 77 

to put down independent movements that were tak- 
ing place in Mesopotamia to throw off the yoke. 
Since the days of Suleiman more particularly, the 
Mesopotamian plain had been neglected. The canal 
systems were not kept in repair, and Bagdad itself 
lost its prestige and its magnificence. The country 
went backward steadily. Turkish misrule completed 
the havoc wrought by the submerging of large dis- 
tricts through the annual overflow of the two rivers, 
now no longer directed into the fields. Though still 
strong at one end of the chain, the links at the other 
end grew weaker and affected the resistance power 
of the chain as a whole. A situation arose as in the 
days of the Roman occupancy, which similarly began to 
fail with the loosening of the grip at the Persian Gulf. 

XV 
The possibility of a decided break in the current 
stretching from Constantinople and Bagdad was 
foreshadowed by Napoleon's expedition to Egypt in 
1798, which came as a complete surprise to Turkey 
herself. With the keen insight of a military genius, 
Napoleon, dreaming of the exploits of world con- 
querors of the past — Cyrus, Alexander and their suc- 
cessors to Mohammed II — saw that the East was to 
be conquered and Turkey eliminated not by way of 
Europe, but through the East. His occupation of 
Egypt was merely the preliminary step. His design 
as shown by his siege of Acre on the Palestinian 
coast was to make himself master of Syria, and 
thence to threaten the possession of the Asia Minor 
Highway — to cut the chain as it were at a strategic 
point. Egypt was merely a passage-way to Pales- 
tine which, as we have seen, had always played the 
part of a bulwark for Egypt against attacks from 



78 THE WAR AND THE BAGDAD RAILWAY 

Asia Minor. Napoleon was hastily called back to 
Egypt, and after the battle of Abukir returned to 
France where disturbing conditions had arisen dur- 
ing his absence. He was thus forced to abandon 
further designs. It is, of course, somewhat pre- 
carious in default of definite evidence to speculate 
as to what was in his mind, but the expedition to 
Syria is significant as an index of his plans. In the 
case of a military genius it is not essential to assume 
that he forms his plans through a conscious knowl- 
edge of past history, though Napoleon was a student 
of the past. Insight often anticipates the conclu- 
sions of the investigator. As an expert in strategy, 
he would have had no difficulty in recognizing that 
a successful attack on the highway leading from 
Constantinople to Bagdad would have spelled the 
end of Ottoman domination of the East. 

However this may be, the expedition to Egypt 
marks the beginning of the attempt on the part of 
Europe to recover the direct access to the East. It is 
the first turn in the unwinding of the chain of those 
events which in the past had led to the triumph of 
the Crescent over the Cross. The barrier set up by 
the grasp of the route from Constantinople to Bag- 
dad in the hands of a Moslem power was to be thrown 
down, and the route to be restored to Christian 
Europe. This European struggle for the control of 
the East which thus begins with Napoleon is in a 
manner a new crusade, though the meaning of the 
symbols have changed, and the Cross stands for the 
restless spirit of progress marked by commercial 
and political expansion, and the Crescent for the fatal- 
istic conservatism of an incrustated civilization. As 
in the Middle Ages, all the great European Powers 
are participating in this new crusade — France, Eng- 



THE STORY OF ASIA MINOR 79 

land, Russia, Austria, Italy, and as the last comer 
the resuscitated Germany, reunited into a mighty 
empire in 1871. 

The history of Europe since the end of the eigh- 
teenth century is largely taken up with the ambitions 
of the Powers to secure a slice of the Near East, 
though before the process of dissolution in the Near 
East sets in we find the historic highway once more 
playing a decisive role. In 1833 the Ottoman Empire 
virtually lost its control of Egypt through the treaty 
of Kutaia (Asia Minor) with Mehemet Ali, which 
not only recognized the latter's authority as heredi- 
tary Pasha of Egypt, but made him also master of 
Syria up to the Cilician gates. The treaty followed 
upon the successful campaign which Ibrahim Pasha, 
the son of Mehemet Ali, waged in 1831-1832 against 
the Sultan Mahmud II. Ibrahim Pasha led the 
Egyptian troops victoriously through the historic 
highway to Konia — once the residence of the Seljuk 
Sultans — where he inflicted a crushing defeat on 
the Turkish army and captured its commander, 
Reshid Pasha. At the Cilician gates, as the strategic 
point, he erected fortifications which are still to be 
seen. The control of this highway was thus lost for 
the Turkish Empire, and the loss would have been 
absolute but for the intervention of Russia. In 1839 
the Sultan made an attempt to regain his prestige in 
Asia Minor, but Ibrahim was victorious at Nisibin 
near Birejik on the Euphrates. 23 The Ottoman 
Empire was once more in a critical position, from 

28 It is interesting to note that the famous Moltke was 
present at this battle as adviser to Hafiz Pasha, and wrote an 
account of it in his "Letters from Turkey/' which he pub- 
lished in 1841 (" Brief e Aus der Tiirkei) of which a French 
translation appeared in 1872 and an Italian one in 1877. 



80 THE WAR AND THE BAGDAD RAILWAY 

which this time it was saved by the European Powers 
whose intervention now became more active — and 
intervention meant partition. 

England established her protectorate over Egypt, 
France definitely took Algiers, Russia made her 
peace with England to share in the domination over 
Persia, Austria acquired a sphere of influence over 
Palestine and snatched Bosnia and Herzogovina as 
stepping-stones leading to the great highway. Italy 
has seized Tripoli, and France obtained a dominant 
position over Syria through railway concessions, 
while England with keen foresight secured naviga- 
tion control at the Persian Gulf to Bagdad. Lastly, 
Germany by a master stroke obtained the concession 
of a railway across the historic highway from Con- 
stantinople to Bagdad — with the privilege of exten- 
sion to the Persian Gulf, and with important branch 
roads at various points of commercial and strategic 
importance. The control of this highway by any 
European power — whether Germany, England or 
France — must lead to the end of Ottoman domina- 
tion of the Near East. It would mark in every sense 
of the word the close of an era and the opening of a 
new one, that would have its effect on the entire world. 
The force of the change would sweep away all en- 
deavors of any modern power, engaged in world com- 
merce, to remain in a state of political isolation. 
The fate of the Near East once more lies in the hands 
of Western nations. Its future will be determined 
by the disposition that will be made of the highway 
across Asia Minor. 

XVI 

The course of events in the Near East since 
the entering wedge represented by Napoleon's ex- 
pedition to Egypt is thus to be interpreted as the 



THE STORY OF ASIA MINOR 81 

irresistible onslaught of the West to break down the 
barrier created in 1453. As we survey the successive 
steps in this onslaught, the struggle between France 
and England culminating in the convention of 1904, 
which gave France a dominant position in Morocco 
in return for allowing England a free hand in Egypt, 
the attempts of France and Russia to hedge in Eng- 
land in India, 24 followed by England and Russia, in 
dividing up their " spheres of influence " in Persia, the 
commercial and railway concessions secured by Eng- 
land, France and Russia from Turkey, sinking ever 
deeper into a slough of desperate weakness, we see how 
these struggles, conventions and partnerships all 
lead up to the dramatic climax — the struggle for 
the historic highway which is the key to the Nearer 
East. Its possession will mean in the future as it 
always has in the past — domination over Syria, 
Mesopotamia, Egypt and probably Arabia; and the 
Near East points its finger directly towards the 
Farther East. Under the modern symbol of rail- 
way control, Asia Minor, true to the genius of its 
history, once more looms up as a momentous factor 
in the world history. The war of 19 14 has brought 
the events of the past to another turning-point in 
the political kaleidoscope. The story of the Bagdad 
Railway is thus crucial for an understanding of the 
crisis that was a large factor in bringing on the great 
war, even though at the time it appeared to be a 
hidden feature because of the accidental occurrence 
that brought the European crisis to an issue. The 
murder at Sarajevo was merely the match applied 
to the pile all ready to be kindled. 

24 See below, p. 89. 
6 



CHAPTER III 

THE STORY OF THE BAGDAD 
RAILWAY 

I 

The Bagdad Railway project, or, to give its offi- 
cial title, " La Societe Imperiale Ottomane du 
Chemin de Fer de Bagdad," was definitely launched 
in 1903 by a diplomatic agreement (known as a con- 
vention), dated March 5th, between the Turkish gov- 
ernment and a syndicate of Germans, organized as 
the Societe du Chemin de Fer Ottoman d' Anatolie 
(Anatolian Railway Company). This company had 
obtained, in 1888, from the Turkish government the 
concession to build a railway, stretching from Haidar 
Pasha (opposite Constantinople) to Angora that has 
played such a notable part in Asia Minor history — 
a distance of 576 kilometres, or about 360 miles, 1 under 
a guarantee from the Turkish government of an 
annuity of 15,000 francs per kilometre. British capi- 
tal was originally represented in the company, but 
was subsequently bought out by the German Syndi- 
cate so that the Anatolian company became a purely 

*To be quite accurate, a short section from Haidar Pasha 
to Ismid on the sea of Marmora — 91 kilometres — had been 
constructed in 1871-73 under the superintendence of Dr. 
Wilhelm von Pressel (see below, p. 86, note), by the 
Turkish government. The road was built to give the Sultan 
Abdul Aziz readier access to his shooting-box at Ismid. 
This section was taken over by the Anatolian Railway Com- 
pany at the time that the concession was given to extend it 
to Angora. 
82 




VIEW OF ANGORA, ON THE ANATOLIAN RAILWAY 




VIEW OF KONIA ON THE BAGDAD RAILWAY 



THE STORY OF THE BAGDAD RAILWAY 83 

German enterprise. The railway was begun in 1889 
and completed in 1893. A further concession to ex- 
tend the road to Konia from the junction Eskishehr 
(the ancient Dorylseum) on the Angora line — a dis- 
tance of 444 kilometres or about 280 miles — was ob- 
tained in 1893 under an annuity guarantee of 13,892 
francs per kilometre. 2 This branch was completed in 
1896. A concession accorded at the same time to 
continue the Angora line to Csesarea and eventually 
to Diarbekr and Bagdad was abandoned by the com- 
pany, in favor of a much more ambitious plan which 
was brought forward as a result of the visit of the 
German Emperor to the Sultan Abdul Hamid in 
1898. A German commission was empowered to sur- 
vey a line cutting transversely across Asia Minor from 
Konia, following largely the historic highway along 
which the armies of so many peoples and lands had 
passed forward and backward for thousands of years, 
emerging from the Taurus range into the plain 
through the famous Cilician gates, thence across the 
Amanus range eastwards to Mosul and south to 
Bagdad. 3 A German cruiser, the Ancora, was at 
the same time sent to examine the conditions at the 
proposed terminus of the line on the Persian Gulf. 
Angora, Konia, the Cilician gates, Adana, Mosul, 

*The reduction was perhaps due to the estimated lower 
cost of the very simple construction of the branch on an 
easy level. 

8 It is said that the Sultan, realizing the importance of 
the railway in the event of war, was particularly insistent 
that the main road was to avoid any approach to the coast 
so as to avert the danger of a bombardment through a hostile 
fleet. The transverse route across the historic highway fulfils 
this condition. 



84 THE WAR AND THE BAGDAD RAILWAY 

Bagdad would link this enterprise in a most romantic 
fashion with the most famous landmarks in the his- 
tory of Asia Minor and of Mesopotamia, which, we 
have seen, cannot be separated from Asia Minor in 
any historical or geographical survey of the region. 
The fate of the one determines the fate of the other. 
On November 27th, 1899, Dr. Siemens, the Director 
of the Deutsche Bank and President of the Anatolian 
Railway Company, announced the scheme, though 
for the present only the general policy of the con- 
cession had been agreed upon by the Turkish govern- 
ment. Over two years were to elapse before on 
January 16th, 1902, an Irade of the Sultan approved 
the convention, which was naturally hailed with great 
enthusiasm in Germany. The Anatolian Railway 
Company, however, found the undertaking too diffi- 
cult to handle under its management alone, and 
accordingly a supplementary company — the above- 
named Societe du Chemin de Fer de Bagdad— was 
organized to carry out the larger scheme in co-opera- 
tion with the Anatolian company. A new convention 
was therefore drawn up in March, 1903, in which 
the Bagdad Railway Company appears as the suc- 
cessor to the Anatolian Company, though the parties 
interested in both were the same. By this conven- 
tion, the concession was extended to Basra, a stretch 
of about 576 kilometres, or 360 miles, below Bagdad, 
and it also included a number of branch lines, the 
three most important 4 of which were (1) one at 

4 The other branches contemplated and included in the 
convention were: (1) Toprak-Kale (near Adana) to Alex- 
andretta, (2) from Haran (on the way to Mosul) to Urfa — 
the ancient Edessa, (3) Bagche to Marash, (4) to Aintab 
from a point near Killis. According to Woods in the Geo- 



THE STORY OF THE BAGDAD RAILWAY 85 

Sadijeh on the Tigris (above Bagdad) running to 
Hanikin, and pointing towards a union with pro- 
jected railways in Persia, centering in Teheran; (2) 
Muslimiya to Aleppo, connecting with the Syrian and 
the Hedjaz railroads running to Damascus, Medina 
and Mecca, and (3) a branch from Zubeir (on the 
way to Basra) to some point on the Persian Gulf to 
be determined in the future. 5 The extension from 
Konia to Basra involved an extension of about 2264 
kilometres, or about 141 5 miles, making a total of 
about 3000 kilometres, or 1875 miles, from Haidar 
Pasha to Basra. Including the branches, estimated 
at about 800 kilometres, or 500 miles, the project 
would thus place in German hands the control of over 
3800 kilometres, or 2375 miles, 5a with junctions con- 
graphical Journal for July, 1917, pages 46-47, it is possible, 
also that the Turkish government may have constructed since 
the beginning of the war, a branch from Ras el-Ain to Diar- 
bekr, but this is not certain and has, therefore, not been in- 
cluded in the map. The Toprak-Kale branch was bombarded 
by the English in the early part of the war. 

The railway distance from Bagdad to Basra can only be 
approximately indicated, since this section is not actually con- 
structed. The direct distance from Bagdad to Basra is only 
500 kilometres, or about 312 miles, but the route along the 
Tigris, with its bends and curves, increases this distance to 
about 800 kilometres, or 500 miles. According to the estimate 
of Sir William Willcocks, the railway route will cover about 
360 miles. 

6 Kuweit was in the mind of the projectors, but had to 
be abandoned. See below p. 101. 

6a Included in this calculation is the stretch Eskishehr- 
Angora of 311 kilometres, or about 194 miles, as a branch of 
the Bagdad Railway. 



86 THE WAR AND THE BAGDAD RAILWAY 

necting with the other railways of Asia Minor, Syria, 
Palestine, Arabia and eventually Persia — truly a 
magnificent enterprise that must command our 
admiration, the emanation of fertile brains endowed 
with a vision of the future. 

II 
The road was to be built in twelve sections of 200 
kilometres each, though this item in the convention 
was subsequently modified. The original plan had 
been, as above indicated, to reach the Persian Gulf 
by an extension of the Angora line across Csesarea 
and Diarbekr and thence along the Tigris, passing 
Mosul, to Bagdad and the Persian Gulf. This was 
the route mapped out by Dr. Wilhelm von Pressel, a 
distinguished German engineer 6 who had con- 
structed the Baron de Hirsch group of railways in 
European Turkey and who built the first stretch of 
the Bagdad Railway Haidar-Pasha-Ismid for the 
Sultan in 1871-1873, as well as the extension to An- 
gora and Konia. The change in favor of a transverse 
route from Konia marks an important turning-point 
in the political aspect of the enterprise. The north- 
ern route would not have interfered with English 
or French plans for railway extension in Asia Minor 
and Syria. England and France, indeed, had the 
right of priority in the field. As early as 1856 (Sep- 
tember 23rd) the construction of a railway from 
Smyrna to Aidin had been granted to an English 
company which was completed in 1866 and eventually 

•He died at Constantinople in 1902. Shortly before his 
death he published a monograph, Les Chemins de Fer en Tur- 
quie d'Asie (Zurich, 1902). 



THE STORY OF THE BAGDAD RAILWAY 87 

extended to Ergerdir, a distance of 470 kilometres, or 
about 294 miles, with four small branches totaling 
a little over 120 kilometres, or about j6 miles— a total, 
therefore, of 592 kilometres, or 370 miles. This, the 
oldest railway in Asia Minor, built without any guar- 
antee from the Turkish government, is the only one 
that was still in English hands at the outbreak of 
the war. A request made in 1891 for the extension 
of this line to Konia was not granted. Not long 
afterwards, however, in 1893, the Turkish govern- 
ment granted the concession to extend a second line 
from Smyrna to Kassaba (93 kilometres, or about 58 
miles), likewise organized by an English company and 
completed in 1897 to Afiun-Karahissar, a total distance 
from Smyrna of 420 kilometres, or 262 miles. 7 The 
Turkish government availed itself of its privilege to 
purchase the line in 1893 and turned it over to French 
capitalists. Probably the plan to extend this second 
line from Smyrna to a junction with a Bagdad rail- 
way, starting from Konia, was the real reason for not 
according the request of the English company for 
a prolongation to Konia. There would in that case 
have been two such lines from Smyrna, connecting 
with the Bagdad Railway. A third smaller coast line 
Mersina to Adana, of 67 kilometres, or about 42 miles, 
was originally in the hands of an Anglo-French Com- 
pany, but was subsequently transferred to the Turkish 
government and later acquired by the Bagdad Rail- 
way Company. It was opened in 1886. 

7 To be accurate, a preliminary extension of 75 kilo- 
metres or 47 miles from Kassaba to Alashehr had been 
granted in 1872. Afiun-Karahissar is the junction with 
the Konia-Bagdad route. Adding a number of small branches 
the Smyrna-Kassaba Company operates in all 322 miles. The 
company was organized as far back as 1863. 



88 THE WAR AND THE BAGDAD RAILWAY 

III 

Had the original plan of the German group to 
run the Bagdad Railway across northern Asia Minor 
from Angora been adhered to, the interior would 
have been kept free, and it is likely that a favorite 
English plan (afterwards taken up also by the French 
government), to run a railway from the Gulf of 
Alexandretta via Aleppo and the Euphrates to Bag- 
dad might have been carried out. Far back in the 
middle of the nineteenth century this project had 
been brought forward by far-sighted British men 
of affairs. Sir Wm. Andrew, a railway official of 
wide experience in India, was particularly prominent 
in advocating this scheme of an Euphrates Valley 
Railroad, which he regarded as of the utmost impor- 
tance for strengthening England's hold on India. 8 In 
1857 an official report was presented to the English 
government by Sir John Macneill and General Ches- 
ney of the proposed route from Alexandretta as the 
starting-point — a much shorter and far simpler way 
than across the difficult Taurus range. In 1872 Sir 
Wm. Andrew succeeded in having a Committee of 
the House of Commons appointed to carefully exam- 
ine into the project. The Committee reported favor- 
ably, the Turkish government was well disposed, 
but nothing came at the time of the splendid scheme. 
The Suez Canal began to absorb the public interest 
in England. England's ultimate possession of it and 

8 So according to Fraser, Short Cut to India, p. 32, who 
regards Andrew as the father of the Euphrates Railway 
project. In 1857 Sir Wm. Andrew published a Memoir on 
the Euphrates Valley and the Route to India (London, W. H. 
Allen & Co.) and again, as late as 1882, Euphrates Valley 
Route to India. 



THE STORY OF THE BAGDAD RAILWAY 89 

her occupation of Egypt prompted her to rest con- 
tent with a shortened water route to India, as a suffi- 
cient protection for her Eastern possessions. 

Had the northern route to Bagdad been followed 
by the German syndicate and left a southern route 
free for a second line in the hands of England or 
France, the railway projects of Asia Minor and 
Syria might have remained purely commercial 
undertakings of great cultural value, marking the 
economic progress of contact between East and 
West. The political aspect of railway plans in the 
Near East might have been permanently kept in the 
background. The European situation would have 
assumed an entirely different coloring, if England 
and Germany had not clashed in the East over the 
Bagdad Railway, as happened immediately upon the 
announcement of the convention of 1 902-1 903. 

The stumbling block that prevented the execution 
of the original plan was — strangely enough — Russia. 
Her opposition to the northern route brought about 
the change. Russia had plans of her own in Asia 
Minor and in the lands to the East beyond. In the 
last two decades of the nineteenth century, Russia 
fearing the extension of English power in the Far 
East cast her eyes about for securing zones of in- 
fluence that might bring her into touch with the 
Persian Gulf and the Indian Ocean. She secured 
the co-operation of France in 1891, and it is both 
interesting and instructive to note that the Franco- 
Russian alliance was originally directed against 
England rather than against Germany. 9 France was 
to form a barrier to English expansion in India east- 
• See Bodley's article on France in the new edition of 
the Encyclopaedia Britannica, vol. x, p. 901. 



90 THE WAR AND THE BAGDAD RAILWAY 

wards by her control of Indo-China, while Russia 
was to check an advance westwards by obtaining 
control of Afghanistan and Beluchistan. With this 
in view her interest lay in securing a hold in northern 
and eastern Asia Minor, with a free hand on the 
southern coast of the Black Sea. She exacted from 
Turkey the Black Sea Basin agreement, formally 
sanctioned in 1900, which reserved to her the right 
to construct railroads in northern Asia Minor. She 
never availed herself of this right, and indeed, while 
busy in building military commercial roads, appeared 
to oppose railway construction in Asia Minor, 10 and 
finally transferred her concession in Asia Minor to 
French capitalists. She wanted, however, to keep 
the route clear for herself from Trebizond south- 
wards to Diarbekr where the Mesopotamian plain 
begins, and eastwards through Armenia and Persia. 
In the background was also the fear that a railway, 
dominating northern Asia Minor, which in case of a 
war would be seized by the Turkish government 
for military transportation, might threaten Russia's 
zones of influence in the East. At all events, her 
opposition was strong enough to secure a modifi- 
cation of the plan of the Bagdad railway in favor of 
the transverse route which, as it turned out, gave 
Germany a tremendous advantage over all rivals, 
though it also brought on the opposition of England. 
This opposition at the time was presumably not 
unwelcome to Russia. Although at the turn from 
the nineteenth century to the twentieth century the 

10 See Geraud in the Nineteenth Century, 1914, pp. 965- 
969 and 1324, who dwells on this point of Russia's opposition 
to railways in the Near East till 191 0, when a change in her 
policy ensued. 



THE STORY OF THE BAGDAD RAILWAY 91 

relations between Russia and Germany had become 
strained, through the substitution of Italy in 1882 
for Russia as the third member in the Alliance with 
Germany and Austria, and though as a consequence 
the alliance with France had been diverted from its 
original purport to a compact against German 
aggression, Russia was not prepared to allow any 
further advantage to be gained in the East by Eng- 
land. On the whole she still preferred Germany, 
and was at any rate willing to see Germany and 
England fight the issue out among themselves. The 
" Entente Cordiale " between England and France, 
too, had not yet begun, though the new era was 
approaching which changed the entire aspect of the 
alignment among European powers. It eventually 
led England and Russia through their common fear 
of Germany to settle their past accounts and pool 
their issues in the East by an amicable division of 
spheres of influence in Persia in 191 1, with little 
regard to the rights of that small nation, struggling 
at the time to secure a popular parliamentary form 
of government. 11 With the European Powers thus 
concerned, each with its own interests, and dis- 
seminating an atmosphere of mutual suspicion and 
distrust, what could the ultimate outcome be except 
the " European Anarchy/' as Lowes Dickinson aptly 
calls the situation that had developed in 1914. 

"See Shuster's work, Strangling of Persia (New York, 
1912). It will be recalled that the treatment accorded to Per- 
sia by Russia and acquiesced in by the English government, 
aroused great indignation at the time in Great Britain. 



92 THE WAR AND THE BAGDAD RAILWAY 

IV 

England's influence at Constantinople, paramount 
till 1880, had weakened since then, largely through 
Gladstone's opposition to the regime of Turkey, for 
which there was ample justification. The Armenian 
massacres of 1894, had shocked Europe, and Glad- 
stone was irreconcilable in his denunciation of the 
" unspeakable Turk," as the Sultan and all Turkey 
came to be called. This, naturally, was not pleasing 
to Constantinople, at the time under the complete 
domination of Abdul Hamid. Germany was quick 
to seize upon the situation and under the leadership 
of her ambitious, restless and romantically inclined 
young Emperor, with his mind full of far-reaching 
schemes, obtained by a series of cleverly designed 
steps the position at the Turkish capital which 
England had once held. The convention of 1902-03 
made it evident that Germany had stolen a march on 
England, and that France's prestige at Constanti- 
nople had likewise suffered through the distinct 
advantage that Germany would have over her in 
the future exploitation of Asia Minor. 

The terms on which the German Syndicate ob- 
tained the concessions of the Bagdad Railway were 
indeed most favorable. The concession was to last 
for 99 years, and this included the two branches 
already built, Haidar-Pasha- Angora and Eskishehr- 
Konia. It had been assumed that the concession 
would not go beyond a line to Bagdad, and England 
felt that as long as the Persian Gulf was not to be 
reached, the situation would not be serious for her, 
either from the commercial or the political point 
of view. The India trade would not be diverted to 
the Persian Gulf in favor of the short land route, 



THE STORY OF THE BAGDAD RAILWAY 93 

because of the double loading involved and the water 
trip from the Gulf to Bagdad. When, however, the 
precise terms of the convention became known, it 
was seen that the extension not only included Basra, 
but also contemplated a branch from Zubeir (not 
far from Basra) to a terminus on the Persian Gulf 
" to be determined," together with the right of navi- 
gation on the Shatt el-Arab and the Tigris — an 
exclusively English privilege — during the period of 
construction of the Railway in this region. That 
gave an entirely new interpretation to the conven- 
tion as a whole and at once created a critical situation 
which steadily grew worse. 

The new Bagdad Railway Company was to be 
capitalized at 15 million francs, of which only one- 
half was to be paid up. As in the case of the 
Anatolian Railway there was to be a guarantee on 
the part of the Turkish government, fixed at an 
annuity of 11,000 francs per kilometre, with an addi- 
tional guarantee of 4500 francs per kilometre per 
year for the management of the railway. The 
receipts above this, up to 10,000 francs per kilometre 
per year, to go to the Turkish government and above 
this amount, 60 per cent, to the government and 40 
per cent, to the company. The sum needed for 
each section, fixed at 54 million francs, was to be 
placed at the disposal of the company through loans 
to be issued by the government, and the interest on 
the loan was further assured out of the coffers of the 
Dette Publique. 12 With such a guarantee, the invest- 

13 On this Turkish institution, setting aside fixed revenues 
of the Turkish Empire from definite sources under the con- 
trol of the European creditors of Turkey and for their 
protection, see the article on Turkey in the Encyclopaedia 
Britannica, pp. 437, 438. 



94 THE WAR AND THE BAGDAD RAILWAY 

ment of the German syndicate was a safe one, 
with scarcely any risks and under assurances of a 
good return. Moreover, since the material for the 
road would naturally be supplied from Germany — 
and free of duty — the profits of construction would 
all accrue to German firms. From this point of view 
alone the project meant a great boon to the German 
industries. 

The " kilometre guarantee " worked so well in 
the case of the first section of the road from Konia 
to Bulgurli, that by dint of economy the construction 
actually cost about 25 million francs less than the 
amount secured through the loan. 13 There was thus 
left a handsome surplus for the syndicate, though 
one that was in danger, to be sure, of being wiped out 
by the far greater cost involved in the second sec- 
tion across mountain passes involving most difficult 
engineering feats. Moreover, the Bagdad Railway 
Company sold the annual guarantee of 4500 francs 
per kilometre for the running of the road to the 
Anatolian Company (i.e., the German syndicate sold to 
itself) for 3200 francs. The difference gave the 
Bagdad Company an annual income of 160,000 
francs, with which it could do what it pleased. Appar- 
ently the lower sum was all that the investment 
called for, and the rest was a " bonus " for the 
investors. Plenty of time was given both for 
beginning the work on each section after it had 
been decided upon — 18 months — and for the com- 
pletion of each section after the work had been 
begun, eight years. All material imported for the 
construction of the road was to be free from duty, 

13 The loan was floated in Berlin at 86.40, and thus realized 
somewhat over 46^ million francs. 



THE STORY OF THE BAGDAD RAILWAY 95 

the company was to have a monopoly of kilns erected 
on the route for the construction of the road, to have 
access to all ports and to navigation on the Euphrates 
and Tigris and the Shatt-el-Arab (junction with 
Euphrates) during the operations, and the privilege 
of reserving to itself the right to construct and ex- 
ploit ports at Bagdad, Basra and on the Persian Gulf. 
In return, the Turkish government was satisfied with 
the demand that the workmen to be employed were 
to be Turkish subjects and the trains manned by 
Turkish officials, with the exception of the highest 
posts which were to be held by Germans—and that 
everybody connected with the railway was to wear 
a fez! For the present the railway was to be a 
single track, but the Turkish government would 
have the right as soon as the receipts reached an 
average of 30,000 francs per kilometre per year to 
demand the laying of a second track at the expense 
of the company. That contingency was remote. 
Years would elapse before the number of passen- 
gers and the freight could possibly defray the cost 
of the management of the road. Its main value 
would be in stimulating trade and in encouraging 
movements of population to the interior of Asia 
Minor, apart from the advantage to German indus- 
tries in supplying the material for the construction — 
the latter a very large item indeed. 

The favor shown the German syndicate was evi- 
dent on the surface. Such terms had never been 
secured before. No wonder that there were great 
rejoicings in Germany when they were announced 
and gnashing of teeth outside of Germany. 

The German syndicate, to be sure, offered to 
English and French capitalists a share in the enter- 
prise. Dr. Siemens and Dr. von Gwinner, the two 



96 THE WAR AND THE BAGDAD RAILWAY 

leading spirits of the project, emphasized strongly 
the desire to give to the undertaking an international 
character, 14 but this move was generally regarded 
as due to an anxiety on the part of the German 
syndicate to obtain foreign capital to aid them. It 
was estimated that the cost of the Konia-Bagdad 
construction would mount to 350 million francs, and 
this was more than Germany was supposed to be 
able to carry alone. The control of affairs was so 
arranged, it was claimed, that it would always re- 
main in German hands. Five of the eleven directors 
were to be chosen practically by the Anatolian Com- 
pany, and Germany would also be in a position to con- 
trol the vote of three Ottoman representatives provided 
for as members of the board, so that the Germans would 
always be certain of a majority over representatives 
of other shareholders. A storm of protest against 
the entire project arose in England and France, and 
the two governments were severely blamed in the 
press and in the legislative bodies for having per- 
mitted the convention to go through, the political 
significance of which when the terms of the con- 
vention became known entirely overshadowed the 
commercial aspects. England more particularly 
felt that not only were her interests in the Near 
East threatened through the trade and freight that 
would pass to the route of the railway, but that her 
domination in India was endangered. She had good 
grounds for this fear, seeing the open manner in 
which advocates of national expansion in Germany 
pointed out the possibilities involved in securing 

"Dr. von Gwinner wrote an article on the subject for 
the Nineteenth Century (June, 1909) " The Bagdad Railway 
and the Question of British Cooperation," in which he declared 
the Company to be open to all. 



THE STORY OF THE BAGDAD RAILWAY 97 

for Germany a continuous route from Hamburg to 
the Persian Gulf in seven or eight days, with only 
four additional days' journey by steamer to reach 
India. The Pan-Germanists, whose voice had be- 
come blatant in Germany by this time, added coals 
to the fire by their equally open jubilation at the 
prospects of a complete German control of Turkish 
possessions in Asia. German colonization in Asia 
Minor was to be encouraged, following in the wake 
of the commercial advantages to be gained by the 
railway, and thus the diplomatic supremacy of 
Germany in Constantinople was to be strengthened 
by the spread of German settlements throughout 
the East. 

It was felt in England that if, as Napoleon is 
said to have remarked, Antwerp in the hands of 
a great continental power was a pistol leveled at 
the English coast, Bagdad and the Persian Gulf in 
the hands of Germany (or any other strong power) 
would be a 42-centimetre gun pointed at India. 

For England, the situation that would be created 
at the eastern terminus of the railway — once the 
project was completed — would indeed be most 
serious ; and quite apart from the political aspects of 
the enterprise and the danger to her far Eastern 
possessions, the privileges which she had enjoyed 
for many years through her control of navigation 
from the head of the Persian Gulf along the Shatt 
el-Arab and the Tigris would have vanished into 
thin air. It was from this end, therefore, that the 
English government attacked the problem raised by 
the new project. 

V 

England's relations with the Persian Gulf date 
from the time of Napoleon's expedition to Egypt in 
7 



98 THE WAR AND THE BAGDAD RAILWAY 

1798. If the French military genius foresaw, as 
there is good reason to believe, that the campaign 
for the control of the Near East must be begun by 
cutting the current stretching from Constantinople 
to Bagdad, English statesmen foresaw with no less 
perspicuity that to nip the project of a control of 
the highway across Asia Minor in the bud, the pole 
at the one end needed to be secured. England, 
realizing at this early period the strategic importance 
of the Persian Gulf for safeguarding her possessions 
in India, proceeded to entrench herself in that region. 
The East India Company in the very same year that 
Napoleon brought his army to Egypt appointed 
a Resident at Bagdad to watch English interests. 15 
This appointment was soon after recognized by the 
Turkish government, and in consequence of the risks 
to which the Resident was exposed, especially dur- 
ing a period of hostility between Turkey and Eng- 
land, a guard was given to him. In 1834, the post 
of Resident was placed under the authority of the 
Government of India, and the Resident was vested 
with consular powers. England was thus the first 
in the field, and indeed it was not until 1880 that 
other European powers began to appoint consular 
agents at Bagdad. 

In the same year that the English Resident be- 
came an official of the government of India, naviga- 
tion rights on the Euphrates were granted the firm 
of Lynch Brothers — three Englishmen who had 
settled in Bagdad as traders. In i860 their right of 
steam navigation on the Shatt el-Arab, the water- 
course connecting Bagdad with Basra (including the 
Tigris), was confirmed by the Turkish government, 
and they enjoy the monopoly to this day. 

w "To report on French intrigue in that country," is the 
way Fraser, Short Cut to India, p. 235, puts it. 



THE STORY OF THE BAGDAD RAILWAY 99 

Looking to the future development of the region 
which in ancient times had been noted for its 
wealth and fertility, the English government had 
undertaken a careful survey of Mesopotamia ex- 
tending over the years 183 5-1 837 under the direction 
of Colonel Chesney. This survey no doubt led 
Chesney subsequently to his advocacy of the Eu- 
phrates Valley project in order to connect the Medi- 
terranean and the Persian Gulf by a railway as an 
effectual means of opening up this entire region to 
Western Europe, as well as furnishing the much- 
needed shorter route to India. 

England had thus obtained a firm grasp of one 
end of the great highway and was determined to hold 
to it. Shortly after it became known that Turkey 
had agreed to the policy of granting an extension of 
the Konia line across Asia Minor, the English govern- 
ment took the further step of establishing a protec- 
torate over Kuweit lying on the Persian Gulf and 
which, it was known, would be picked out by the 
Bagdad Railway Company as the eventual terminus of 
the stretch from Bagdad to the shore. For a long 
time Turkey's suzerainty over the region south of 
Bagdad had been purely nominal, and she was obliged 
to recognize the independence of several little Sultan- 
ates and Emirates in this section, among others that 
of Kuweit, which gave her considerable trouble. 
England took advantage of the situation and, cham- 
pioning the cause of a certain Moubarek, forced the 
recognition of his claims and of his independence. 
In return for this protection, the district around 
Kuweit came practically under English control. She 
thus put an effectual spoke into the wheel of the 
German syndicate several months before the conven- 
tion of January, 1902, with the Anatolian Railway 



100 THE WAR AND THE BAGDAD RAILWAY 

Company was actually signed, and no doubt in an- 
ticipation of this contingency. It necessitated a 
change in the terminus to Fao (60 miles south of 
Basra), not as advantageous as Kuweit, and involv- 
ing costly " barrage " undertakings to be carried out. 
Moreover, with Kuweit further south under British 
control, a British fleet could in case of an emergency 
command Fao. 

British policy was determined that the railway 
should not reach the Persian Gulf under German 
control. This was clearly enunciated by Lord Cran- 
bourne, Under-Secretary for Foreign Affairs, in 
January, 1902, who stated that the " maintenance of 
the status quo in the Persian Gulf was incompatible 
with the occupation by any Power of a port on 
those waters." 16 The Bagdad Railway, if extended 
even to Basra, would destroy the trade that English 
merchants and English capital had painfully built 
up in the most important centre between India and 
the Suez Canal. With Germany pushing English 
commerce at every point through the remarkable 
energy, perseverance and enterprise shown by Ger- 
man merchants, the English prospects for retaining 
the commercial supremacy in the East were not 
bright, but over and above this was ever the political 
danger involved in seeing Germany standing behind 
the railway project, entrenched at a port on the 
Persian Gulf — with nothing intervening between that 
sheet of water and the ports of India. The Bagdad 
Railway was indeed a short cut to India — but a short 
cut from Berlin, not from London. The Suez Canal 
which was the English " short cut " would be brought 

"Quoted by Geraud in the Nineteenth Century, 1914, 
(June) p. 1317- 






THE STORY OF THE BAGDAD RAILWAY 101 

into rivalry with the Asia Minor route which was the 
shorter cut, to the disadvantage of the former in 
almost every respect. 

VI 

The delay between the announcement of the 
concession of the Konia-Bagdad route in November, 
1899, and the drawing up of the convention in January, 
1902, was due in part to the protests voiced in Eng- 
land, France and Russia, in part to negotiations 
with the Turkish government in regard to details, 
and in part to preparations needed for so gigantic 
an undertaking. The German Emperor visited Eng- 
land in November, 1899, and obtained, so it is said, 
the promise of a free hand in Asia Minor from Mr. 
Chamberlain, but fresh difficulties must have arisen 
when the full significance of the scheme became 
apparent. The details of the diplomatic negotiations 
during these years are not known. It is said that 
France at one time offered to build a route from 
Horns on her Beirut-Damascus line to Bagdad with- 
out a guarantee, but the protests and counter pro- 
posals were unavailing and the convention was 
drawn up and published. 

The storm then broke loose with renewed fury 
in England and France. Debates ensued in the 
House of Commons and in the Chambre des Deputes, 
and in both the decision was reached not to accept 
the offer of the German syndicate for participation 
in the scheme. The English government seemed at 
one time indeed favorably disposed towards sharing 
in the railway as a means of making her influence 
felt and safeguarding English interests, but the 
popular opposition roused to a high pitch of indig- 
nation at the failure of the government to prevent the 



102 THE WAR AND THE BAGDAD RAILWAY 

convention from being consummated, forced Balfour 
at the time Prime Minister, to abandon further nego- 
tiations. Moreover, there seemed to be no prospect 
of securing for England a place in the enterprise on 
an equal footing with the German and French capi- 
talists. This was in April, 1903. A little later, 
after a violent debate in the French Chambre, the 
decision was reached that the bonds of the Bagdad 
Company were not to be quoted on the Paris Bourse. 
In France the inclination of the government was like- 
wise to participate, with the understanding that 
French capital was to be represented by 40 per 
cent., equal to that of the German syndicate, and the 
balance, 20 per cent., to be accorded to some power — 
presumably Russia. Charges were brought against 
M. Delcasse, then Minister of Foreign Affairs, that 
he and the French Ambassador at Constantinople, 
M. Constans, had abetted Germany in her negotia- 
tions with the Porte. This suspicion was probably 
a factor in leading to the final action which was, to 
be sure, in the nature of a compromise, for it per- 
mitted French capitalists to invest if they so felt 
inclined, without having the stock of the company 
listed on the bourse. As a matter of fact, French 
capital some years later — about 1910 — became inter- 
ested to the extent of 30 per cent, as against 40 per 
cent, of German capital, with the balance divided 
among Swiss and Austrian capitalists and banks. 
Since the latter groups worked in harmony with 
Germany, the German control of the entire enter- 
prise remained undisputed. 17 

"According to the most recent data, the Directors of 
the company at the outbreak of the war consisted of 26, 
distributed as follows: 11 Germans, 8 French, 4 Turks, 1 
Austrian and 2 Swiss, i.e., 18 votes controlled by the Germans. 



THE STORY OF THE BAGDAD RAILWAY 103 

Looking at the action taken by England and 
France in the light of later developments, one is 
inclined to commend the wisdom of Balfour and Del- 
casse in favoring participation, and to regret that 
they could not carry through the negotiations in 
progress to a successful issue. Even with a pre- 
ponderating German representation in the Direc- 
torate of the company, the presence of English and 
French capitalists would have acted as a check 
against designs to use the project for political aims, 
as their presence would also have enabled the Eng- 
lish and French governments to watch the unfolding 
of plans in a direct manner, instead of being depend- 
ent upon reports and announcements after the fait 
accompli. There was also — it must be recognized — 
a justification for the German point of view that the 
control should not be transferred to a combination 
that might become strong enough to oust the German 
syndicate at some time in case of a crisis. The proj- 
ect, whatever its origin and its purpose, had taken 
definite shape in Germany. It was a creation of 
German enterprise and it had been made possible 
through German pressure at Constantinople and 
through the willingness of German capitalists to 
undertake it. Most favorable terms for investors 
had been secured through German influence at Con- 
stantinople, and under these circumstances the offer 
of the German syndicate to " internationalize " the 
enterprise should have been accepted on its face value 
and in good faith until evidence to the contrary 
had been forthcoming. The German syndicate was 
insistent through Dr. Siemens that there was no 
political aim attached to the project, and there was 
no reason to question his perfect sincerity in this 
view. The German government had given assur- 



104 THE WAR AND THE BAGDAD RAILWAY 

ances to the Sultan that it did not propose to use 
the project for colonization purposes, though German 
publicists foresaw that the increase of commerce 
with the Orient would lead to large settlements of 
Germans in Asia Minor, as commercial opportunities 
had brought them in large numbers to Brazil and to 
the Argentine Republic. Such a result, natural and 
legitimate, could only be of benefit to the general 
commercial and industrial progress of the world, as 
long as it was not deflected towards carrying out 
political aims. The German Chancellor von Bulow 
had explicitly declared in 1903 that Germany was 
not connecting political aims with the railway. Even 
though this statement might have been made in 
order to put the European powers off the scent, it 
would still have been better for England and France 
to have accepted the offer to participate, if for no 
other reason than to be in a better position to watch 
the game from the inside, instead of being forced to 
peep through the fence. 

VII 

For France there was an additional reason for 
participation because of her large holdings of railways 
in Asia Minor and Syria which would all connect 
eventually with the Bagdad Railway. Besides the 
Smyrna-Kassaba line, transferred to a French com- 
pany in 1893, and the Mersina-Adana line in which 
French and English capital was interested (before re- 
ferred to), 18 French capital and French enterprise had 
built a railway from Jaffa to Jerusalem (86 kilo- 
metres, or about 54 miles) in 1892. A French Company 
was organized in the same year for the building of the 
Beirut-Damascus railway, later extended northward 

» Page 87. 



THE STORY OF THE BAGDAD RAILWAY 105 

to Horns and Aleppo, and south to Mezerib, a total of 
578 kilometres, or 361 miles, and completed in 1910. 19 
Early in the century the French also constructed a 
railway from Tripoli to Horns, which was to offset 
in a measure the Bagdad Railway through the con- 
trol of a second port on the Mediterranean by the 
side of Beirut. The French plans also contemplated 
the extension from Damascus to Jerusalem and 
thence through Bethlehem to Gaza. 20 At Aleppo 
the junction would be made with the Bagdad Rail- 
way and, via the section Aleppo-Damascus, with the 
starting-point also of the Hedjaz railway, built by the 
Turkish government for the benefit of the Mohamme- 
dan pilgrims. This road runs along a stretch of 1754 
kilometres, or 1097 miles, to the two sacred cities of 
Arabia, to Medina where Mohammed died, and to 
Mecca where he was born. 

19 The section Damascus-Mezerib was opened in 1894; the 
section Beirut-Damascus in 1895, and the connection with 
Aleppo in 1906. There is also a railway Acre-Haifa to Da- 
mascus, opened in 1905, and under c Turkish control, connecting 
with the Hedjaz Railway at Darat. 

20 Since the beginning of the war the connection of the 
Haifa-Damascus Railway has been extended by the Turkish 
government from El-Fule to Lydda, where a junction has been 
formed with the Jaffa- Jerusalem line. Beyond Jerusalem the 
railway has also been extended at least to Beersheba, perhaps 
to Bir Auja (according to Woods in the Geographical Journal 
for July, 1917, p. 54) — a total distance of about 160 miles. A 
part of this railway has been destroyed by the English army 
coming across the Sinai Peninsula from Egypt and which, 
according to recent reports, has taken Beersheba. Within the 
last two years the English have built a railway from Port Said 
along the coast to within about 10 miles from Gaza. Since 
the beginning of the war, the Turks have destroyed the Jaffa- 
Ramie section and the Tripoli-Horns railroad, to use the rails 
for the construction of the El-Fule-Lydda-Jerusalem-Beer- 
sheba stretch. 



106 THE WAR AND THE BAGDAD RAILWAY 

The Tripoli-Horns road had been built without any 
guarantee or subsidy from the Turkish government. 
It was the intention, moreover, of the French capi- 
talists to carry on the Beirut-Damascus-Aleppo line 
to Birejik and extend east to Adana, so as to con- 
nect with the southern coast of Asia Minor. This 
plan was, of course, destroyed by the Bagdad Rail- 
way convention. Moreover, had the convention not 
come in between, the French company would have 
also extended the Syrian railway system to the south- 
east of Birejik, along the Euphrates, direct to Bagdad. 
This plan had actually been worked out while 
M. Paul Cambon was French Ambassador at Con- 
stantinople. The approval of the Turkish govern- 
ment had been secured, but the necessary capital 
could not be obtained at the time and so the scheme, 
which tallied closely with the English project of 
Sir William Andrew, 21 was temporarily abandoned. 

France had, therefore, good reasons for chagrin 
and alarm upon the announcement of the convention 
for the Bagdad Railway scheme, but an equally 
strong reason for participating in it as a fait accompli, 
because of the two junctions with French railways 
at Afiun-Karahissar in Asia Minor, and at Aleppo 
in Syria. Over two hundred millions francs of 
French capital had been invested in these Asia Minor 
and Syrian railways, besides one hundred and fifty 
million francs represented by improvements in the 
ports of Smyrna and Beirut, by the invested capital 
of French commercial houses in Asia Minor and 
Syria, and by the value of the holdings of French 
religious and educational institutions in Palestine. 22 

21 Above, p. 88. 

23 These are the figures for 1903, given by Cheradame, 
Le Macedoine, Le Chemin de Fer de Bagdad, p. 262. No 
doubt they have increased considerably since then. 



THE STORY OF THE BAGDAD RAILWAY 107 

Had France accepted the 40 per cent, of the total 
capital of the Bagdad Railway offered to her in 1902, 
or had France and England joined in accepting this 
share, equal to that to be retained by the German 
syndicate, the " internationalization " of the scheme 
might have developed amicably. That possibility 
at all events was the only hope of avoiding what did 
happen — the political exploitation of the scheme by 
Germany for enlarging her hold on Turkey and the 
East, and the endangering, in consequence, of the 
peace of Europe. 

It would have been worth while to take the chance 
of participation instead of standing outside and 
allowing Germany free scope, which was no doubt 
what the German government wanted, though per- 
haps not the German capitalists who needed and 
sincerely desired outside co-operation. There is 
every reason to believe that at the end of the war, 
the " internationalization " of the Bagdad Railway 
will again be brought forward as the solution of 
the problem, and as the safeguard against using a 
great and valuable commercial enterprise for politi- 
cal ends. To be sure, it may be argued that the 
later investment of 30 per cent, of French capital 
with French representatives on the Directorate did 
not prevent political affairs from taking their course, 
but this capital came in at a late hour (about 1910). 
Moreover, it did not have the backing of the French 
government, and, therefore, lacked an important 
element of influence. 

VIII 

Meanwhile the railway began to be built and 
in October, 1904, the first section from Konia to 
Bulgurli was completed and opened a traffic. The 



108 THE WAR AND THE BAGDAD RAILWAY 

construction of this section was, as pointed out, a 
comparatively simple matter and left a large margin 
of profit out of the guarantee for the concessionaires. 
The second and third sections, however, involved 
passage through a formidable mountain region with 
great engineering obstacles to be overcome that 
vastly increased the cost. 23 As against about 15^2 
million francs for the first section, the second was 
estimated to cost 75 millions and the third 40 million 
francs, while the cost of the fourth running again 
on a level surface would only be 22^2 millions. 
Under the terms of the convention the loans were 
to be floated for one section only at a time. The 
company would, therefore, have only 54 million 
francs on hand (assuming a full return on the floated 
second loan) from which to build a section to cost 
75 millions. A long delay now occurred with tedious 
negotiations and it was not until June, 1908, that a 
modification of the original convention was pushed 
through, whereby the plan of building only one sec- 
tion of 200 kilometres at a time was changed to a 
concession to build 840 kilometres, or 525 miles, 
from Bulgurli to El-Helif, not far from Mosul. The 
loan, covering almost three sections, was to be floated 
at one time, so as to place the full amount needed 
at the disposal of the company. Moreover, the com- 
pany as a further concession was not obliged to 
begin building till 191 1, at which time funds guaran- 
teeing the interest on the enormous additional debt 
that Turkey was thus forced to take upon herself 
were available out of the Dette Publique. In 191 1, 
finally, when work was resumed, a third convention 
was drawn up (March 20th), giving the concession 

28 See the account of these difficulties with illustrative 
sketch in Fraser, Short Cut to India, pp. 55-61. 



THE STORY OF THE BAGDAD RAILWAY 109 

for the 600 kilometres remaining from El Helif to 
Bagdad. Work was carried on at several points at 
the same time. At the time of the outbreak of the 
war in 1914, the second section from Bulgurli to 
Adana was almost finished, all but a small stretch 
of some 42 kilometres, or 26 miles, of particularly 
difficult construction to connect the two ends of the 
stretch. 24 The stretch from Bagdad to Samarra — 120 
kilometres, or 75 miles, — was also finished. Since the 
outbreak of the war, not only has the Bulgurli-Adana 
section been completed, but work beyond has been 
pushed to some 30 miles beyond Nisibin, within less 
than 100 miles, from Mosul, so that only this stretch and 
the one from Mosul to Samarra — a total of about 425 
kilometres, or 265 miles, — is all that remains to com- 
plete the gigantic enterprise up to Bagdad. 25 

The long delay of almost seven years ensuing 
between the completion of the first section and the 
resumption of the work was not, however, due en- 
tirely to the financial difficulties. The opposition to 
the scheme continued and many things happened 
in Turkey to change the face of things. The Turk- 
ish revolution of 1908-1909 brought a different set 
of men to the helm. The growing complications in 
Morocco, which had not been simplified by the con- 
ference of Algeciras, constituted another factor 
suggesting to Germany to proceed cautiously. The 

24 From Dorak to Karapurnar work was carried on simul- 
taneously at the Bulgurli and Adana ends. See Geographical 
Journal, vol: 44 (1914), PP- 577-5&>, with map. This stretch 
has now been completed. 

25 See Dominian, Railroads of Turkey, in the Bulletin of 
the American Geographic Society, December, 1915, and the 
references there given, the Levant Trade Review for June, 
1916, p. 100, and the most recent account by Woods in the 
Geographical Journal for July, 1917. 



110 THE WAR AND THE BAGDAD RAILWAY 

agitation for an increase of the navy had also be- 
come more active during this period in Germany, 
occasioning further fears in England and Russia of 
Germany's future designs, while on the other hand 
the rapprochement between England and France, 
which received a strong impetus from the visit of 
King Edward to Paris, in May, 1903, was a forecast 
of the complete reconciliation between England and 
Russia, and had its natural reaction in making Ger- 
many feel that she was being encircled by Powers that 
wished to repress her ambitions. 

The archives of the chancelleries of Europe, no 
doubt, conceal many negotiations and diplomatic 
conversations that took place during these years 
which have not as yet found their way to the public 
and perhaps never will. They would afford further 
explanations for the delay in the resumption of the 
project. Germany, more particularly, would be 
prompted to proceed slowly for fear of arousing a 
European conflict before she was ready for it. But 
while other issues in Europe and elsewhere were 
thus coming forward which contributed still further 
towards changing the political atmosphere until the 
storm of 1914 broke out, the most serious problem, 
though occasionally receding into the background, 
was ever that created by the suspicion of Germany's 
ambitions in connection with the Bagdad Railway. 
The growing influence of Germany in Turkey, 
strengthened if anything after the Turkish revolution, 
— for Turkey needed a powerful support for the two 
Balkan wars, — made England fear for the safety of 
the Suez Canal as well as for India. Russia realized 
that her hold on eastern Asia Minor and on lands 
beyond was threatened by Germany's plans. 

Negotiations followed which at one time looked 



^^^^^^ 




BRIDGE OVER THE EUPHRATES AT JERABLUS ON THE BAGDAD RAILWAY 




TERMINAL STATION OF THE BAGDAD RAILWAY AT HAIDAR-PASHA 
OPPOSITE CONSTANTINOPLE 



THE STORY OF THE BAGDAD RAILWAY 111 

as though the European powers might avert the con- 
flict which publicists and men of affairs felt was 
coming. To counteract the political influence of the 
Bagdad Railway, the general policy was advocated 
of building other railways in the disputed territory 
which through Russia's energetic policy in Persia 
had extended to that country. The French scheme 
of an Euphrates Railway from Damascus-Horns to 
Bagdad with connections to Tripoli, Beirut and 
Haifa, was taken up. This railway in French hands 
would offset Germany's ambition for a complete 
control of the highway of Asia Minor, since it would 
cut into this highway at a most important point. In 
case of war, French and English troops could be 
transported from three ports on the Mediterranean 
into Mesopotamia and secure that end. England 
was to be accorded the Bagdad-Basra stretch as her 
possession, while Russia was to be urged to carry out 
plans for railways in Persia which would include a 
line from Teheran to Bagdad. It is interesting to 
see in these plans their convergence towards one 
point — the Persian Gulf. Fully in accord with what 
we have seen to have been the primary factor in a 
control of the Near East, it was recognized that 
with the one pole of the wire stretching from Con- 
stantinople via Bagdad and the Gulf in the hands of 
England and her allies — France and Russia — Ger- 
many, holding Constantinople in her grasp through 
her alliance with Turkey, could never carry out her 
ambitions in the Near East, except by a military 
success over the Triple Entente of so decided a char- 
acter as to force England, France and Russia out 
of the East entirely. This was in 1909-1910. In 
December, 1910, the English and French plans were 
laid before the Turkish government. The plan 



112 THE WAR AND THE BAGDAD RAILWAY 

failed because of Russia's maintenance of her oppo- 
sition to railways, and because Germany refused to 
give up the Bagdad-Basra sketch entirely to Eng- 
land, though Dr. von Gwinner in December, 1909, 
still contending that the entire undertaking was of 
an economic character, offered to English capitalists 
through Sir Ernest Cassel a controlling influence in 
that section. There was also an American project for 
obtaining railroad concessions in Asia Minor, brought 
forward in the year 1909, which was defeated by Rus- 
sian and German influence in Constantinople. 

For a time the situation looked more hopeful. Eng- 
land felt sufficient confidence in her ultimate ability 
to prevent any German control beyond Bagdad to 
encourage in the years 1909-1911, under the nominal 
auspices of the Turkish government, an elaborate 
investigation for scientific irrigation of Mesopo- 
tamia so as to redeem the country from the shameful 
neglect of Turkish rule, which for centuries had done 
little or nothing to maintain the canal system upon 
which the prosperity of southern Mesopotamia 
depended. 26 This investigation was carried on by 
Sir William Willcocks who formulated detailed plans 
for irrigation of large districts which, to be sure, could 
only be carried out at enormous cost but which would 
restore the country to its former splendor. A part 
of this work — the Hindia Barrage — was undertaken 
by Turkey and completed by the end of 19 13. The 

29 As a result of this neglect great swamps are found 
in the southern Euphrates Valley, covering an area of over 
50 miles in width and more than 200 miles in length. This 
swampy district, stretching to Basra, was one of the factors 
in bringing about the failure of the English campaign in 191 5, 
since it prevented reinforcements sent to aid General Town- 
send from reaching him in time. 



THE STORY OF THE BAGDAD RAILWAY 113 

concession of March 20th, 191 1, to build an additional 
section of the Bagdad Railway was limited to the stretch 
El-Helif to Bagdad. This seemed to accord with a 
definite agreement to which, according to Lord Hal- 
dane's recent account of strained relations between 
England and Germany during the years immediately 
preceding the war, the German Emperor had con- 
sented on the occasion of a visit to England in 1906, 
whereby England was to. have the section from Bagdad 
absolutely. It is said, however, that the Emperor en- 
countered opposition to the concession on his return to 
Berlin. 

Another point secured in the year 191 1 was the 
abandonment of Russia's opposition to the Bagdad 
Railway and her willingness to undertake railway 
construction in Persia to link on to the Bagdad 
line. 27 This change of the utmost importance took 
place as the result of a visit to the Czar to Potsdam 
in December, 1910, and was announced in August, 
191 1. Later, the reservations held by Russia for many 
years for the construction of railways in northern Asia 
Minor were turned over by her to a company of French 
financiers. A successful opposition on the part of 
England, France and Russia to an increase of custom 
duties in Turkey of 4 per cent., in order to provide more 
revenue needed to pay the interest of loans for the 
Bagdad Railway and which would have seriously im- 
paired English and French interests more particularly, 
may also be listed as a gain. Negotiations to definitely 
settle other points of contention with Germany, more 

"At Khanikin, to which a branch of the Bagdad line 
from Sadijeh was to be constructed by the Germany company. 
See above, p. 85. 
8 



114 THE WAR AND THE BAGDAD RAILWAY 

particularly the ever crucial one of the stretch from 
Bagdad-Basra to the Persian Gulf, were in progress 
when the war broke out in August, 1914. It is reported 
that in July, 1914, an actual agreement had been 
reached, whereby England was to preserve her free 
scope at the Persian Gulf and her preponderance 
in that zone was to be unequivocally recognized. 
This must have involved, therefore, either the abso- 
lute British control of the stretch from Bagdad to 
Basra with no projection beyond to any port directly 
on the Persian Gulf, or a representation on the Direc- 
torate, of a character to safeguard English interests 
and to prevent the political exploitation of the enter- 
prise — at least at the Persian Gulf. 

IX 

If this report be correct — and there seems to be 
no reason to question it — the outbreak of the war 
came at a particularly unfortunate time, for with the 
Bagdad Railway problem really out of the way, the 
entire Eastern situation would have assumed a far 
more hopeful aspect. The railway has been a 
nightmare resting heavily on all Europe for eighteen 
years — ever since the announcement in 1899 of the 
concession granted to the Anatolian Railway Com- 
pany. No step ever taken by any European power 
anywhere has caused so much trouble, given rise to so 
many complications and has been such a constant 
menace to the peace of the world. No European 
statesman to whom the destinies of his country 
has been committed has rested easily in the presence 
of this spectre of the twentieth century. In the last 
analysis the Bagdad Railway will be found to be the 
largest single contributing factor in bringing on the 



THE STORY OF THE BAGDAD RAILWAY 115 

war, because through it more than through any- 
other cause, the mutual distrust among European 
Powers has been nurtured, until the entire atmos- 
phere of international diplomacy became vitiated. 
The explanation for this remarkable phenomenon, 
transforming what appeared on the surface to be a 
magnificent commercial enterprise, with untold pos- 
sibilities for usefulness, into a veritable curse, an 
excrescence on the body politic of Europe, is to be 
sought in the history of the highway through which 
the railway passes. The control of this highway 
is the key to the East — the Near and the Farther 
East as well. Such has been its role in the past — 
such is its significance to-day. 

More is the pity that an undertaking which from 
every other except the political point of view spells 
progress, and which should have been the means of 
bringing the West back to the East, the daughter 
back to the mother and source of all civilization, 
should instead have led to the most violent struggle 
among the leading nations of the world in all history 
— a struggle in which all the gains made since the 
French revolution in the direction of the advance- 
ment of humanitarian aims, the betterment of the 
condition of the great masses, popular liberties and 
the progress in science and the arts, and all the 
efforts to bring nations closer to one another in a 
recognition of the common goal of mankind threaten 
to be dissipated. A railway which, as a medium of 
exchange of merchandise and of ideas, ordinarily ful- 
fils the function of binding nations together, in this 
instance has been the primary cause of pulling them 
apart and of drawing them up in opposing camps, 
bent on mutual destruction. 



116 THE WAR AND THE BAGDAD RAILWAY 

X 

To be entirely fair the blame for this outcome of 
the project must not be put entirely on the shoulders 
of Germany, though by far the major portion lies at 
her door. In the first place, there are no substantial 
reasons for assuming that when German capitalists 
began to develop their plans for a railway in a small 
section of Anatolia, they were actuated by another 
motive than that which had prompted English capi- 
talists in earlier days to build a line from Smyrna, 
and French capitalists to undertake railways in 
Syria. Germany since the end of the seventies had 
moved forward by leaps and bounds in her foreign 
commerce as in the growth of industries within her 
borders. Commerce is progressive and looks ever 
forward to new regions to conquer. Before the 
present Emperor came to the throne, Bismarck had 
launched German colonization in southern Africa, as 
a natural outlet for surplus population and as a 
further medium of commercial expansion. German 
trade with the United States and with South America 
as with the Levant was growing. What more natural 
than that enterprising German capitalists should 
recognize the possibilities of an increase of trade 
through a railway across Asia Minor ! 

Railways are the natural means of opening up 
the resources of a country, and Asia Minor is par- 
ticularly rich in natural resources and in fertile 
plateaus that under cultivation could become most 
productive. By the same natural process, England 
had come to the Persian Gulf and established her 
trade on a firm basis, and France had come to Syria. 
The thought of a further extension of the railway 
from Angora or Konia was equally natural, and it 



THE STORY OF THE BAGDAD RAILWAY 117 

will be recalled that the project of a railway to 
Bagdad, connecting the Mediterranean with the 
Persian Gulf first took shape in English brains and 
came near to being realized long before Germany 
had appeared on the scene. 28 Moreover, the orig- 
inal plan of the German syndicate, following the 
scheme of Dr. Wilhelm von Pressel, the engineer of 
the Anatolian Company, would have avoided any 
conflict with English or French plans for a more 
direct route from the Gulf of Alexandretta across to 
the Euphrates. The northern route, if it had been 
chosen, would never have led to an ambitious Pan- 
Germanic program for a German control of the East, 
which could only be carried out through the medium 
of a transverse route for the Bagdad Railway, con- 
trolling the highway along the historical road from 
Constantinople to the Persian Gulf. It was Russia 
who was responsible for the change in the German 
route which, as we have tried to show, made all the 
difference in the political aspects of the enterprise. 
The far more difficult and infinitely more costly route 
from Konia across the Taurus range created the 
international problem. One may question, therefore, 
whether up to the close of the last century, German 
capitalists were in league with a government having 
ulterior motives of a political character in view in 
pushing their project. 

Exactly when the German government under the 
leadership of the Emperor connected these motives 

28 The plan was again brought forward by Sir Wm. 
Will cocks in 1910 (see Geographical Journal, vol. 35 [1910], 
p. 13) in connection with his plans for the renascence of the 
Euphrates Valley through an elaborate scheme of irriga- 
tion. The railway was to start at Tripoli and pass across 
northern Syria via the Euphrates to Bagdad. 



118 THE WAR AND THE BAGDAD RAILWAY 

with the railway is a question difficult if not impos- 
sible to answer. In a general way the policy of 
expansion for Germany was an inheritance of the 
Bismarck period. It took on a larger aspect with 
the growing prosperity of the country, and no doubt 
was stimulated by the restless energy of the young 
Emperor — who was as progressive in everything 
that concerned Germany's advancement as he was 
aggressive in his whole attitude. The two traits 
are gen -rally found united. But such aggression, 
taking on the formulation of plans for acquiring a 
foothold in the East, was entirely in line with the 
general policy of European nations, who from the 
beginning of the nineteenth century had gathered 
like hawks around a carcass, to divide up as much 
of the Turkish Empire as they could snatch. No 
doubt this appropriation has worked great benefits 
for the lands thus absorbed. Witness Algiers and 
Tunis and, more particularly, the marvellous trans- 
formation that England has worked for Egypt 
through her splendid and tactful regime, but the 
absorption, albeit beneficent, involved taking away 
the liberty of peoples to choose their masters. Ger- 
many was, therefore, in her policy, merely following 
the example set by others, and she had determined 
like Shylock to " better the instruction." 

She did so, and seized upon the magnificent 
project of a railway that would form the shortest 
route through the Near East to the Far East and, 
connecting on its way with all the veins of the 
region marked by railways constructed or projected, 
would give her a dominant position among Euro- 
pean powers. We may assume that some such idea 
was in the Emperor's mind when on his visit to 



THE STORY OF THE BAGDAD RAILWAY 119 

Damascus in 1898, he proclaimed himself to be the 
" friend and protector of the three hundred millions 29 
of Mohammedans." He had a vision of the glorious 
future in store for his country, extending its influence 
over the entire East — even to distant India where 
there are large numbers of Mohammedans, and natur- 
ally to Egypt. Utterances of such a mystic character, 
coming from the Emperor, and given under a dramatic 
setting, 30 did much to arouse suspicion of Germany's 
ulterior designs in the Near East, and when such delphic 
sayings were translated into language of unmistakable 
clearness by boastful Pan-Germanic publicists, intoxi- 
cated with enthusiasm over their far-reaching schemes, 
the natural result was to arouse all Europe to the 
menace involved in a control of the historic highway, 
dominating the East by the strongest military power in 
the world, and which was fast becoming also one of 
the strongest naval powers. The terms of the conven- 
tion when made public in the two forms in 1902 and 
1903 clinched the situation, and left no doubt of the 
decidedly political character that the enterprise had 
acquired through the backing of the German 
government. 

Even then we need not assume that the German 
syndicate was in league with the Pan-Germanic 
movement. Capitalists — even though they be 
patriotic Germans — are not apt to be carried away 
by political visions. They realize the advantage of 

29 The figure was too large by about a hundred millions, 
but that did not disturb his Majesty. 

80 The words were uttered under the shadow of the 
tomb of the Sultan Saladin, the conqueror of Jerusalem, and 
on whose grave the Emperor laid a wreath which was still there 
in 1912, when I visited Damascus. 



120 THE WAR AND THE BAGDAD RAILWAY 

large enterprises for their country, but their point 
of view for all that is apt to remain financial rather 
than political. To the credit of leaders of finance in 
Germany, like Dr. von Gwinner, it should be said 
that they did all in their power to " internationalize " 
the undertaking, with the perfectly natural limitation 
of not wishing to see the project pass out of Ger- 
many's hands. Dr. von Gwinner was handicapped 
by the conviction that grew stronger year by year, 
that whatever the attitude of the German syndicate 
as business men might be, the German government 
was behind the plan with political ends in view. We 
have seen how the suspicion of this end grew apace, 
and despite occasional prospects of a settlement of 
the points of contention among the European powers, 
the inevitable conflict as a result of this suspicion set in. 

XI 

Such is the story of the Bagdad Railway which 
contributed more than any other complication to 
create the condition needed for the conflict. From 
the historical point of view there are thus two aspects 
to the Bagdad Railway. It represents, on the one 
hand, the last act in the process of reopening the 
direct way to the East which became closed to the 
West by the fall of Constantinople in 1453, and which 
began to be reopened with the loosening of Turkey's 
hold on one end of the historic highway stretching 
across Asia Minor. On the other hand, the conflict 
to which the railway gave rise illustrates once more 
the crucial role that this highway has always played 
in determining the fate of the Near East from the 
most ancient days down to our times. The opposi- 
tion of the European powers to the Bagdad Railway, 






THE STORY OF THE BAGDAD RAILWAY 121 

used as a political scheme for the aggrandizement 
of a particular country, registers the instinctive pro- 
test of the West against the domination of the East 
by any one power — no matter which. The danger 
would have been just as great and the hostility 
aroused just as strong if Russia had at any time 
seized Constantinople and threatened the East by 
an advance into Asia Minor, whether with an army 
or by means of a railway. The fatal error of Ger- 
many was to conceive of such a domination, for with 
the reopening of the Near East to the West, the 
logical plan, the one dictated by the verdict of his- 
tory, was to keep the world's highway open for the 
entire West — and for the East. The Bagdad Railway 
in the hands of Germany, stretching from Con- 
stantinople via Bagdad to the Persian Gulf, would 
have meant the practical closing of the highway to 
all other nations — as effectively as the taking of 
Constantinople accomplished this in 1453. 

The history of Asia Minor gives the verdict that 
the highway must be kept open — if the world is to 
progress peaceably and if the nations of the West 
are to live in amicable rivalry, while once more pass- 
ing through the period of an exchange between 
Orient and Occident — such as first took place in the 
days of Alexander the Great. This verdict suggests 
" internationalization " of the highway as the solu- 
tion, and it also voices a warning to the West that 
the reopening of the highway must not be used for 
domination over the East but for co-operation with 
it, not for exploiting the East, but for a union with 
it. What form that union should take will become 
clearer after a consideration of the two issues in- 
volved in the war. 



CHAPTER IV 
THE ISSUE AND THE OUTLOOK 



The war of 1917 is not the war of 1914; it is in 
fact an entirely different war. The terrific explosion 
of three years ago was the result of over-pressure 
exerted on the European body politic by conflicting 
national ambitions, by Pan-Germanism on the one 
side, by Pan-Slavism on the other, by growing 
mutual distrust and fears among European nations, 
leading to the Triple Entente to counterbalance the 
Triple Alliance, — the one combination as unnatural 
as the other was incongruous, and by economic 
rivalries. There were definite issues of a political, 
racial and economic character involved in the war 
that thus broke out, but these issues have all been 
moved into the background for the present by the 
paramount one that marks the war of 1917. The 
present war is actually, as has been so often set forth, 
a struggle on a gigantic scale for the preservation 
of popular government — and that is what that sadly 
overworked term " democracy " in its essence means 
— in those countries in which such government ex- 
ists, and for the triumph of popular government in 
those countries in which it does not as yet exist. 
We are at war with Germany, because Germany 
represents a most powerful and a most menacing 
government, based not on the democratic but on 
the autocratic principle. The sinking of the Lusi- 
122 



THE ISSUE AND THE OUTLOOK 123 

tania and the resumption of a ruthless sink-at-sight 
submarine policy represent the occasion for our 
entrance into the war, as the violation of Belgium's 
guaranteed neutrality on the part of Germany was 
the occasion for England's entrance. The reason 
in both cases lies deeper. 

The change from the war of 1914 to that of 1917 
was brought about by three factors : ( 1 ) by Germany's 
conduct of the war, (2) by the Russian revolution, and 
(3) by our entrance into the stupendous conflict. 

Germany's diplomatic case at the outbreak of the 
war of 1914 was not bad. There was assuredly some 
justification for her feeling that she was hemmed 
in by hostile powers — by France and Russia. She 
had reason to fear Russian aggression, Russia being 
at the time in the control of a government of much 
the same autocratic character as that of Germany. 
With England and Russia pooling their interests in 
Persia in 1910, a new enemy had shown her hand, 
for it was the fear of Germany's growing power in 
the East that brought England to the side of Russia. 
The Agadir incident of 191 1 revealed the definite 
alignment of England and France against Germany 
and foreshadowed the triple Entente, directed pri- 
marily against Germany. These facts must not be 
brushed aside in a review of the European situation, 
growing more complicated year by year, though it 
does not, of course, follow that we must accept 
Germany's interpretation of the facts. Germany 
saw France and Spain gaining control of Morocco, 
she saw Italy getting a slice of Turkey, and she was 
left out in the cold without the prospect of getting 
so much as a bone, if the plans of the European 



124 THE WAR AND THE BAGDAD RAILWAY 

powers arrayed against her were to be carried out. 1 
There was also some " academic " justification for 
her contention that a quarrel between Austria and 
Servia should be fought out by these two contest- 
ants, albeit that in reality the position taken may 
have had a sinister substratum, but Germany en- 
tirely spoiled her case by her conduct of the war. 

It is that conduct rather than her responsibility 
for the war that has aroused at once the fear and 
the hostility of practically the entire world, outside 
of the groups arrayed on her side, and even these 
groups stand in fear of her. In regard to the share 
of responsibility for the actual outbreak of the war of 
1914, there is still room for difference of opinion 
even after three years of unprofitable discussion. 
Certainly, the official mobilization of the Russian 
army in the last week of July was a contributing 
factor. No one who was in Germany at the time 
when the mobilization of the Russian army was an- 
nounced could have had any doubt of the genuine 
fear of Russia felt in Germany. Germany could 
have prevented the war, and that is quite as serious 
a charge against her as the general belief that she 
willed it. 2 In regard to her conduct of the war, 

1 When I was in the East in 1912, during the Turco- 
Italian war, I heard much talk of a probable further partition 
of Turkey's Mediterranean possessions, England to get or 
take Palestine, and France to have Syria, and an agreement 
that Germany was to have nothing. Of course, this may have 
been mere talk, but I heard it. 

2 Her rejection of Sir Edward Grey's proposal for a 
European conference to take up the Austro- Servian question, 
when it was perfectly evident that the question without such 
a conference would lead to a general European war, revealed 
Germany's unwillingness to prevent war. 



THE ISSUE AND THE OUTLOOK 125 

however, there can be no difference of opinion. The 
facts are there and speak for themselves. By Ger- 
many's conduct, I mean the military policy adopted 
by the General Staff and executed as the official 
acts of the German government, I mean the official 
violation of Belgium's neutrality, the official imposi- 
tion of exorbitant fines on Belgian cities and towns, 
the official recourse to such mediaeval, aye, almost 
primitive, methods of warfare as taking hostages and 
deporting the population of invaded districts, 3 the 
official order to burn and sack a large portion of 
Louvain, the official sinking of ships carrying non- 
combatants, the official destruction of towns and 
villages in the line of retreat, the official raiding of cities 
and towns by airships. 4 The feature common to 
these acts, apart from their inhuman aspect, is that 

8 This was the favorite policy of the ancient Assyrians. 

4 1 exclude unofficial acts of individual soldiers, firstly, 
because such acts (violation of women, looting and individual 
deeds of cruelty) take place in every war. There are brutes 
in every army, and, secondly, because the accounts of such 
individual atrocities have probably been grossly exaggerated, 
as American newspaper correspondents traveling through 
Belgium at the time of the atrocities testify. Most of the 
cases in Lord Bryce's report on the atrocities in Belgium 
are official acts, not the doings of individual soldiers, acting 
from brute instincts let loose through the war 5 . In the Atlantic 
Monthly for October, 1917, Professor Kellogg, of the American 
Belgian Relief Commission, while severely arraigning Ger- 
many's treatment of Belgium, expressly states that he came 
across no instances of Belgian children with their hands cut 
off or of women with breasts mutilated, despite the wide spread 
of such reports during the first year of the war and from time 
to time since then. 



126 THE WAR AND THE BAGDAD RAILWAY 

they affect to an almost exclusive degree the civilian 
non-combatant population. Their evident purpose 
was to terrorize and thus to reduce the morale of the 
enemy. They are military measures, and the German 
government so far from complaining of the hostility 
aroused by them ought consistently to welcome such 
hostility as an indication of the success of these 
measures. To be sure, the measures have also been 
stupid, for they have stimulated recruiting in Eng- 
land, have intensified the hatred of Germans in all 
the belligerent countries and have brought new 
opponents of Germany into the field — but they have, 
on the other hand, undoubtedly resulted in striking 
terror throughout the world and in bringing the entire 
world to the realization of the menace involved in 
the existence of a government acting autocratically, 
without any responsibility to the people and, there- 
fore, without control. 

II 

Germany's military conduct is responsible for 
the present situation, and even those (if there be 
any) who would justify such conduct on the ground 
of military necessity, must recognize the result as a 
natural and logical sequence. The responsibility 
for official conduct rests with the German govern- 
ment and not with the people, who were not con- 
sulted either at the outbreak of the war or at any 
time during the war. The German government de- 
clared the war before calling in the Reichstag, and 
the same government is carrying it on, with little 
regard to the national legislative body which merely 



THE ISSUE AND THE OUTLOOK 127 

passes the credits. Even the fact that the people 
are patriotically behind the government does not 
make the German people a particeps criminis in any- 
real sense of the word. That government has never 
received a mandate from the people. It does not 
act through the representatives of the people, but 
imposes its authority on the population. In the case 
of an autocratic non-responsible government, it is 
proper to speak of the people behind the government ; 
in a democratic responsible government, the govern- 
ment is behind the people. In a democracy the 
people lead and the government follows. In Ger- 
many, the government leads and the people nolens 
volens must follow. The distinction between the 
German government and the German people in the 
official conduct of the war is, therefore, proper. 

Such a distinction, entirely out of place in a popu- 
lar government, is an inherent feature in a govern- 
ment imposed upon a people; and it makes little 
difference whether we assume the German people 
to be blinded, cowed, obstinate, politically immature, 
or poisoned by mischievous and insidious theories of 
the state, it is the government that must assume the 
responsibility for the results of the policy adopted 
by it. Besides, we must bear in mind that for many 
years before the war, there was a continuous strug- 
gle in Germany for democratization, chiefly on the 
part of the Socialists controlling several million 
voters, and that at the outbreak of the war there must 
have been over 50 per cent, of the German people 
who were opposed to the form of government pre- 
vailing in Germany. The 107 Socialists in the 
Reichstag, now joined by the Clericals (about 90) 
and some of the liberal factions, constitute a major- 



128 THE WAR AND THE BAGDAD RAILWAY 

ity, fighting autocracy in Germany and determined 
to bring about that internal change which is a neces- 
sary preliminary to any peace negotiations. 

Germany's conduct of the war, shameful and 
inexcusable, is thus the chief factor in creating the 
war of 1917 — which may be defined as a realization 
of the fact that there is no room in the modern world 
for autocracy, especially if that autocracy be power- 
ful and efficient. Nations cannot live on equable 
terms with one another in the present age of close 
intercommunication unless they are all organized 
on a basis of popular government. That kind of 
government is the spirit of the age, and the German 
government in opposing itself to that spirit becomes 
the enemy of mankind. The war of 1917 is, there- 
fore, a struggle forced upon the world to secure the 
triumph of the spirit of democracy. 

Ill 
The significance of the Russian revolution lies 
similarly in revealing the strength of the spirit of 
the age in a country, which at the beginnnig of the 
war in 1914 was still striving to suppress it. Revo- 
lutions come ordinarily before a war or after a war. 
The almost unprecedented occurrence of a great 
revolution during a great war was a signal that the 
war for the triumph of democracy was about to 
replace the earlier one. It came at a time when 
Germany's conduct of the war had shown the menace 
involved in a government that was in opposition to 
the spirit of the age. The Russian revolution was 
not only a revolt against a government that had 
imposed a war on its people, precisely as Germany 
had imposed it, for the purpose of carrying out plans 



THE ISSUE AND THE OUTLOOK 129 

of aggression at the expense of other nations, it 
was the first decisive stroke for the triumph of world 
democracy. It revealed the existence of forces, 
lying deeper than the issues which brought on the 
war of 1914. It showed the real cause for the 
" European Anarchy," so forcibly described by 
Lowes Dickinson in his survey of the situation 
before 1914. That cause lay in the existence of gov- 
ernments which made their plans independently of 
the will of the people. The Russian Duma, though 
designed to have more authority than the German 
Reichstag, had become an offense to a government 
that was determined to make it its tool, and for a 
time succeeded in doing so. The spirit of autocracy 
was still strong enough in Russia in 1914 to ride 
roughshod over the principle of popular government, 
but the real issue, concealed for the time being by 
complications of a diplomatic character, rose to the 
surface during the war of 1914 and helped to bring 
on the revolution. 

The present Russian government, entirely popu- 
lar in character, has no concern with the issues of 
1914. It therefore, naturally and consistently, re- 
nounces all plans of annexation and aggression which 
occupied the now overthrown autocratic government. 
It has no designs on Constantinople, nor is it con- 
cerned with the formation of a great Pan-Slavic 
state that would have been as serious a menace to 
the tranquillity of the world, as the carrying out of 
the ambitions of the German government for a 
" place in the sun," which would have thrown the 
rest of the world into the shadow. Russia is fight- 
ing for the preservation of its democracy, and its 
best leaders realize that this democracy is not safe as 
9 



130 THE WAR AND THE BAGDAD RAILWAY 

long as an autocratic government is maintained in a 
neighboring state. Whether these leaders can guide the 
country through the present crisis remains to be seen. 
Finally, our entrance into the war clinched the 
situation and gave to the war of 1917 its definite 
character as a struggle for the preservation and 
triumph of democracy throughout the world. The 
President of this great Republic has become the 
spokesman of the world. His peace and war mes- 
sages alike breathe the spirit of democracy. A true 
statesman does not act upon " academic " theories, 
formed in his study, but from a profound recognition 
of the meaning of the events as they transpire. Led 
step by step through his interpretation of actual 
occurrences, President Wilson has reached his pres- 
ent commanding position, which has found its most 
notable expression in his answer to the Pope's pro- 
posals for peace. He has made the program of the 
war of 1917 so clear that he who runs may read. 
He has clarified the issue in such a manner as to 
make it evident even to the people of Germany 
that our war — the world's war — against Germany 
is actually a war for the German people, as much 
as a war for the preservation of American democracy. 
We as Americans have no special concern with the 
issues that brought on the war of 1914; we are 
solely concerned with securing the peace of the 
world through the establishment of popular gov- 
ernment in Germany. The precise form of that 
government must be left to the people of Germany 
who will work it out in accordance with their special 
genius, but the basic principle of that government 
must be the same as prevails in democratic govern- 
ments elsewhere — the complete responsibility of a 



THE ISSUE AND THE OUTLOOK 131 

government to its people through its elected repre- 
sentatives. Such is the war of 191 7, clearly set 
forth by the attitude of Russia and of the United 
States; set forth with almost equal definiteness by 
recent utterances of such leading English statesmen as 
Lloyd George and Arthur Balfour, and which ere 
long must be fully accepted as the issue by France 
and Italy. How small and petty seem purely 
national ambitions or measures of revenge after the 
war in the light of the great paramount issue which, 
in the President's interpretation of this war, stamps 
it as one of the noblest as well as one of the most 
dreadful of all wars — noblest by virtue of the issue 
involved, dreadful in that the leading exponents of 
modern civilization should still be obliged to have 
recourse to the most barbaric manner of securing 
the triumph of a great ideal. 

IV 

In contrast to the war of 1917, which may be 
called the world war for democracy, the war of 1914 
is the European struggle for supremacy. Had this 
latter war taken the ordinary course, it would have 
shaped itself as a supreme struggle between Eng- 
land and Germany. 5 If England had triumphed, 
there would probably have been a combination of 
Germany and Russia against England. If Germany 
had succeeded in imposing her authority on Europe, 
the combination against her would have continued 
and would have led in time to an attempt to throw 
off the yoke — probably with the additional help of 
the United States and China and the South American 

6 See the closing paragraph in Cramb, England and Ger- 
many, p. 136. 



132 THE WAR AND THE BAGDAD RAILWAY 

Republics. In either case the world would have 
been involved for years to come in preparations for 
another war, and militarism would have become 
rampant everywhere. The causes that led to the 
explosion in 1914 were of the ordinary kind — that is 
to say, the kind that ordinarily lead to wars. They 
have in the main been indicated above, 6 but there 
were two striking features marking the outbreak of 
the war. In the first place there were the pre- 
monitions through the aggressive spirit of both 
Germany and Russia, closely allied with the com- 
plications in the Balkan States, and in the second 
place the surprisingly large number of supplemental 
issues that converged to intensify the struggle for 
supremacy into a general melee on an unprecedented 
scale. 

The Moroccan situation on two occasions within 
the last decade became threatening through Ger- 
many's ambitions, while the Balkan wars had a 
larger significance because of the face of Russia to 
be seen in the background. England's and Russia's 
interference in the affairs of Persia was another 
premonitory symptom, as was Italy's seizure of 
Tripoli. Again, the outbreak of the war at once 
revived other issues like that of Alsace-Lorraine for 
France, the Trentino provinces for Italy, Finnish 
independence, the dream of a resuscitation of Poland, 
the hopes of the Jewish Zionists for the possession 
of Palestine. Added to all these issues was the 
Bagdad Railway project which, as we have seen, 
developed from a commercial undertaking of the 
first magnitude to a political scheme of even greater 
proportions. This transformation in the character 

6 Page 123. 



THE ISSUE AND THE OUTLOOK 133 

of the project was, as I have tried to show, gradually 
brought about through two factors (i) through the 
natural growth of Germany's political power as a 
consequence of her marvellous industrial expansion 
and which led her rulers to cherish political am- 
bitions which were unnatural, because they trans- 
gressed bounds dictated both by existing circum- 
stances and by due consideration for the peace of 
the world, and (2) through the close alliance be- 
tween Germany and Turkey, which had led to the 
reorganization of the Turkish army under the tute- 
lage of German officers. 

This movement dates back to 1885, when the 
German General von der Goltz was called to Con- 
stantinople by the Sultan Abdul Hamid to become 
a professor in the chief military school of Turkey. 7 
Others followed to assist von der Goltz, but it was 
not until after the Turkish revolution of 1908-1909 
that a further stimulus was given to the movement 
by the appointment of a military commission of 
thirty German officers to train the Turkish army 
in German military discipline and German methods. 
The results are to be seen in the present war, in 
which the military strategy of the Turkish armies 
is carried out under the direction of German officers. 
The Turkish army is practically an adjunct to the 
German military machine. An alliance between two 
nations, so diverse as the Germans and the Turks, 
naturally had an exclusively political significance 

7 It is worth nothing, however, that fifty years earlier 
(in 1836) Moltke, then a young officer in the Prussian army, 
spent over two years in Constantinople at the request of the 
Sultan Mahmud II, in imparting military instruction and in 
organizing the Turkish militia. 



134 THE WAR AND THE BAGDAD RAILWAY 

that still further demonstrated the intention of the 
German government to use the Bagdad Railway for 
carrying out its political ambitions. The historic 
highway across Asia Minor, thus controlled by the 
military staff of Germany, would be closed to the 
rest of Europe. The railway would serve as a 
barrier as effective as the one erected by the Ottoman 
Turks, when by the taking of Constantinople they 
controlled the entire stretch to Bagdad and the 
Persian Gulf. If anything was needed to bring 
the various issues agitating Europe to a convergence, 
the situation created by the political character given 
to the Bagdad Railway was able to do so. One of 
the articles in the convention of 1902-1903, granting 
the concession of the line to Bagdad, stipulated 
that the road was to be used by the Turkish govern- 
ment for military transportation, and the German 
company had to pledge itself to build military sta- 
tions along the route, at an expenditure up to four 
million francs. The stipulation was perfectly natu- 
ral, but the reorganization of the Turkish army 
under German tutelage changed the character of 
the article in the convention to a German military 
measure, which would give Germany not a commer- 
cial but a military support for the exploitation of the 
East. It could lead to nothing else but to the con- 
trol of the entire Nearer East. With Asia Minor 
in her hands, Germany would be in a position to 
follow in the wake of ancient Persia, Greece, Rome 
and the Arabs, and to have Mesopotamia, Syria, 
Palestine and Egypt fall into her lap. 

Through the Bagdad Railway events were thus 
shaping themselves for a terrific conflict in the East 
that would parallel the coming clash in the West. 



THE ISSUE AND THE OUTLOOK 135 

The addition of the Bagdad Railway project to the 
Eastern question rendered the outlook for any satis- 
factory settlement of that question practically hope- 
less. The gathering clouds became more ominous, 
and despite occasional rifts they grew thicker and 
steadily descended. 

Since the Agadir incident in 191 1, it was more 
clearly evident than ever to careful observers that 
the hopes for a peaceful solution of the many prob- 
lems presented by European politics had diminished. 
Only wise counsels or the rise of a great command- 
ing figure in some European capital could have 
averted the catastrophe which was " on the cards." 
Without either contingency it was only a question of 
time before Pan-Germanic ambitions, contemplating 
a sphere of influence stretching from Berlin across 
Vienna and Constantinople to the Persian Gulf, 
would clash with Pan-Slavic policies for the 
creation of a confederacy of Slavonic States under 
Russian domination, or before Germanic expansion 
would lead to a life-and-death encounter with Eng- 
land, with the slumbering yet potent hostility be- 
tween Germany and France ready to be aroused 
by either outbreak. Wise counsels did not prevail 
either in St. Petersburg or Vienna, nor did the great 
statesman with a large vision appear either in Lon- 
don or Paris or Berlin, and so when the fatal last 
week of July, 1914, arrived, the scene was set for the 
tragic climax to the futile negotiations of the diplomats. 

V 

The issue of 1917 will have to be settled before 
those of 19 14 can be taken up. So much is evident 
from the profound change that has come over Russia 



136 THE WAR AND THE BAGDAD RAILWAY 

and from the entrance of the United States into the 
war. President Wilson's answer to the peace pro- 
posals of the Pope has committed this country defi- 
nitely to the policy of first making " the world safe 
for democracy " before taking up the issues involved 
in the war of 1914. It is only a question of time — 
and perhaps a short time — before the Allies will 
clearly and unequivocally accept this policy, and 
make the sacrifice of placing their claims and hopes 
for the time being into the background in order to 
win the paramount issue — the overthrow of a medi- 
aeval form of autocratic government in Germany, and 
the substitution of a form that will recognize as its 
central principle the responsibility of a government 
to the constituted representatives of the people. 
The details are unimportant. The recognition of the 
principle is the essential thing. It is hardly neces- 
sary to argue that the preliminary condition, so for- 
cibly set forth by President Wilson, does not involve 
any interference in the internal affairs of a nation. 
The democratization of Germany is precisely what 
the liberal element in that country, representing 
even before the war a majority of the people, was 
striving for ; and this proportion has increased since 
the war, as is evident by the defection of the Cen- 
trum party, which before the war was always to be 
found on the side of the government. It is, there- 
fore, entirely accurate to say that the issue of 1917 
is being fought for the benefit of the German people 
as much as for the safety of the world. The danger 
for us lies in a confusion or a commingling of the 
issues of 1914 with the single one of 1917. With 
the issues of 1914 we as a nation are not concerned. 
They arose in Europe and belong to Europe, but 



THE ISSUE AND THE OUTLOOK 137 

for that very reason we will be in a stronger position 
to advocate at the peace conference a solution that 
will be just, and one that will give due consideration 
to avoiding the repetition of the conditions that 
brought on the war. 

The adjustment will be difficult but not hopeless 
after once the atmosphere shall have been cleared 
of the vitiated currents created by the poisonous 
gases of an irresponsible autocracy, using as its 
weapon military terrorism. The world will breathe 
more freely after Germany shall have adopted or 
shall have by circumstances been forced to adopt 
the principle of popular government, and thus be 
placed on a par with conditions prevailing in all 
other civilized governments at the present time- 
though under varying forms. Political intrigue, and 
political plots, including an elaborate and sinister 
" spy " and " agent " system are the tools that an 
autocracy needs to maintain itself in opposition to 
the will of its people. Russia before the war used 
precisely the same tools — only not so cleverly and 
perhaps not so lavishly as Germany. A govern- 
ment that receives its mandate from the people, that 
derives its authority from the popular will and that 
makes its account to the people does not need such 
methods — it spurns them. An autocratic military 
government is necessarily bent upon perpetuating 
itself; a democratic popular form of government is 
necessarily bound by the will of the people. A free 
people does not favor conquest at the expense of 
enslaving another people; it will not tolerate a 
policy that creates the atmosphere of war. Democ- 
racy, to be sure, is liable to error and not infre- 
quently falls into error, but the inherent sense of 



138 THE WAR AND THE BAGDAD RAILWAY 

right and justice in the people will assert itself 
sooner or later — and generally sooner than later — to 
correct the error. An autocracy regards itself as 
infallible. It knows no law the fulfilment of which 
might endanger its own existence or its hold upon 
the people. In a democracy law is supreme; in an 
autocracy the law is bent to serve the purpose of the 
rulers. 

With all the nations engaged in this gigantic strug- 
gle — to safeguard and promote popular government to- 
wards which the entire civilized world has been tend- 
ing — including, of course, Germany — since the French 
Revolution, it is impossible for nations to live on terms 
of peace with those that have not yet accepted the 
underlying principle of democracy. In its last 
analysis, the fundamental cause of the kind of war 
that is now being waged was the existence of an 
undemocratic government in one of the sister nations 
— and that one of the most powerful and efficient, and 
in all other respects one of the most advanced. One 
cannot go so far as to assert that the issues of the 
war of 19 14 which were real and fundamental would 
not have led to an outbreak if Germany had been 
organized on a democratic basis, but the war would 
have been fought out in an entirely different way. 
It would not have led to the Avar of 1917. 

VI 

With the paramount issue won, the world will 
be in a position to take up the issues of 1914, some 
of which are of comparatively recent origin, like the 
Alsace-Lorraine question or the problem of Finnish 
independence, others of long standing like the Polish 
question and the situation in the Balkan States, 



THE ISSUE AND THE OUTLOOK 139 

which may be traced back to the foundation of the 
Ottoman world empire in the fifteenth century. 

It is perhaps safe to predict at present, even be- 
fore the paramount issue has been disposed of, that 
although there will be some readjustments, the map 
of Europe will not be materially changed after the 
peace conference has done its work. Belgium will be 
on the map as before the war, Finnish independence 
will be restored by a Russian Republic that will 
have neither the interest nor the desire to dominate 
a foreign nation. The one radical change to be 
expected in northern Europe will be the creation 
of an independent kingdom of Poland with its neu- 
trality guaranteed. There may be a series of 
" internationalized " independent states* Belgium, 
Luxemburg, Lorraine and Alsace to form a con- 
tinuous barrier between Germany and France, 8 and 

8 This solution appears to find much favor in England 
and might prove to be more satisfactory for the peace of the 
world than the alternative of allowing Lorraine and Alsace 
to decide by a referendum to which government each desires 
to be connected. We must not forget that while Lorraine 
is French, Alsace is at least as much German as it is French. 
It was German before it became French. See Dominian, 
Frontiers of Language and Nationality in Europe, p. 42, who 
says " Alsace was a province of German speech throughout the 
Middle Ages as well as after Louis XIV's conquest of the 
land. The French took a solid foothold mainly after the 
Revolution and during the nineteenth century. An enlightened 
policy of tolerance towards Alsatian institutions cemented 
strong ties of friendship between the inhabitants and their 
French rulers." 

The entire third chapter in this admirable book on The 
Franco-German Linguistic Boundary in Alsace-Lorraine and 
Switzerland is an important contribution to the subject, which 
should be carefully read by those interested. 



140 THE WAR AND THE BAGDAD RAILWAY 

whose neutrality will be guaranteed by all the 
nations of Europe combined, or by the League of 
nations which may be formed after the war. There 
may be some alteration of the boundary between Italy 
and Austria, along the lines of concessions which Aus- 
tria was ready to make at the outbreak of the war 
during her negotiations with Italy. It may be that 
a confederacy of the Balkan States will be formed, 
and that Greece will obtain possession of all the 
islands in the archipelago, which by natural conditions 
belong to her. 

In the Near East, however, momentous changes 
are to be expected. He would be bold, indeed, who 
would venture to predict of what nature they will 
be. All that I propose in these closing pages is the 
more modest attempt to forecast the outlook at the 
time of the Peace Conference. In the deliberations 
of the Peace Conference to which the world is look- 
ing forward so anxiously, the future of the countries 
lying around the Mediterranean Basin will consti- 
tute the most serious problem to be considered. It 
is a problem far more intricate than any of the 
issues in the West. The prerequisite condition to 
a satisfactory settlement is the determination of the 
principles that should guide the deliberations of the 
conference. What these principles should be is sug- 
gested by the history of Asia Minor which is, as 
has been so constantly emphasized in this study, 
the key to the Near East. 

Let us in the first place recognize that the exten- 
sion of Western civilization into the East is as inevi- 
table as was the peopling of the Western Continent 
by settlers from Europe, consequent upon the voy- 
ages of discovery four centuries ago. The " trend 



THE ISSUE AND THE OUTLOOK 141 

towards the East" which we have traced back to 
the days of Alexander the Great, which actuated 
Rome and which underlies the movement repre- 
sented by the Crusades, again set in at the end of 
the eighteenth century when Napoleon brought his 
armies to the base of the pyramids of Egypt. That 
expedition foreshadowed the removal of the barrier 
set up by Mohammedanism against European and 
Christian access to the East. The Western invasion 
of the East has been going on steadily since that 
time and will receive a fresh stimulus through the 
present struggle. 

But this important distinction between the ear- 
lier and the recent " trend " is to be noted. Until 
the last effort of the Crusaders to keep the way to the 
East open to the West, the West was attracted to the 
East for what it could bring out of it. The East 
until the fifteenth century was still the treasure- 
house of art, of artistic manufacture, and of prod- 
ucts essential to Western civilization. It had still 
retained in a large measure its position as the mother 
of all culture, for even Greek civilization was largely 
Eastern in origin, having the stamp of the East on 
it, and Rome was dependent for her art and her litera- 
ture and her thought upon the stimulus she received 
from the Greek models. The religion of Western 
Europe was an eastern product, modified by contact 
with Greek thought, that was unfolded under the 
influence of Eastern ideas. The Arabs passed on 
the torch of learning to the West. Even Greek 
philosophy came to Christian Europe in the form 
given to it by Mohammedan scholastics. Moorish 
and Byzantine architecture — essentially Eastern — 
formed the inspiration that led to the " Gothic " 



142 THE WAR AND THE BAGDAD RAILWAY 

as the notable expression of the Western spirit. 
The Mediaeval mind was largely steeped in Eastern 
thought and in Eastern views of life. 

In the modern " trend toward the East," on the 
other hand, it is the West that is pouring its pro- 
ducts into the East. Commerce is based on exchange 
of wares, but what we are sending to the East far 
outbalances what we are extracting from there. 
Trade with the East in our days means bringing 
the West to the East. Europe and America measure 
their success in securing this trade by the increase of 
their exports. The tendency at least is all in 
the direction of filling the East with Western 
manufactures. 

We are also introducing Western modes of 
transportation, Western inventions, Western meth- 
ods of building, Western sanitation and Western 
ideas of education, as well as Western models 
of government. The East is being transformed 
under this influence of the West — slowly but surely; 
and travelers whose romantic natures are thrilled 
by the originality and picturesqueness of the dis- 
appearing East not infrequently lament the change, 9 
which it must be admitted is not always to the 
advantage of the East. The tendency, however, is 
unmistakable, due to forces over which we have no 
control. It should be our task to understand this 
tendency, to recognize its deeper import, and to 
direct it by an intelligent policy into the proper 
channels. 

9 So Lord Redesdale in his charming " Memoirs " (Lon- 
don, 1916). 



THE ISSUE AND THE OUTLOOK 143 

VII 

What can the modern " trend " or rather, let us 
say, what should it be but the movement towards 
the resuscitation of the East? 

The East made its last notable contribution in 
the seventh century of this era when it gave birth 
to a new religion, genuinely oriental in spirit and 
character. Mohammedanism swept through the world 
and led to a distinct civilization known as Arabic, 
which exercised a profound influence on European 
thought and science. This civilization ran its course 
to the climax during the six centuries following 
upon Mohammed. Since then the East has entered 
upon a state of languish, from which it has been 
occasionally roused as after the Crusades under the 
spell of the Ottoman conquests, but without making 
any further contributions to the world's treasure- 
house. The soil of the East had become exhausted 
after so many milleniums. Some new chemical ele- 
ment was needed to restore it to vigor. The con- 
servatism which we are in the habit of associating 
with the East is merely a symptom of this languish- 
ing condition. The Ancient East was progressive, 
or it would not have produced the great civilizations 
that are being unearthed through the researches of 
the archaeologist and the historian. The modern 
East is disillusioned, because it is so old. It has seen 
glory arise and fade away so often that it has lost 
faith in permanent progress, and has either resigned 
itself to a fatalistic attitude towards life, or sought 
refuge from struggle by a quiescent myticism. 

But the West, yielding to the charm and allure- 
ments of the East, is being once more driven to the 



144 THE WAR AND THE BAGDAD RAILWAY 

lands that are the source and the very inspiration 
of all our Western culture. The pressure comes in 
the form of commercial expansion, greed if you 
please, but it also assumes other garbs, as the mis- 
sionary zeal to bring Western education, Western 
medical progress, hygiene and religious and political 
ideals to the East. Both movements, the commer- 
cial and the educational invasion of the East, have 
been going on side by side for a century. They both 
spring from a source deeper than any force that 
can be controlled by human efforts, but to our 
shame it should be said that instead of recognizing 
this source as the real incentive to the Western in- 
vasion of the old East, we have acted on the prin- 
ciple that the progressive culture of the West justifies 
a forcible conquest of the East. Availing ourselves 
of the growing weakness of the East, its inability 
to cope with the new forces developed by the West, 
we have considered it to be our destiny to bring 
the East under subjection to the West. European 
nations have grabbed and exploited the East. They 
have looked upon the East as a hunting ground and 
have vied with one another in bagging the spoils. 
And yet beneath all this, and despite the opposition, 
aye, the hostility that through the spirit of greed 
and rivalry among European nations has been 
aroused in the East, the process of the resuscitation 
of the East has gone on, at times silently, but also 
through the direct methods which have been fol- 
lowed with such signal success by the French in 
Algiers and Tunis, and by the English in India and 
Egypt. Full recognition should be given to the 
results of European domination, on the whole benefi- 
cent, in these lands. A large share of credit falls also 



THE ISSUE AND THE OUTLOOK 145 

to the educational institutions organized in Eastern 
lands by European effort — missionary efforts in the 
best sense under both Christian and Jewish tutelage 
— and that have been productive of such striking 
results, though as yet within restricted circles. 

Is not the implication clear that in our policy 
towards the East, we should start from the inter- 
pretation of the force that drives the West towards 
the East? Beneath the impelling economic and in 
part sordid motives on the surface is the recognition 
that the East at present needs the West in order to 
be awakened to a new life. Political aims must be 
made subservient to this higher meaning of the 
modern " trend towards the East." Herein lies the 
fatal error of Germany in reversing the proposition, 
and making the trend subservient to political ambi- 
tions. Through this error she transformed what 
would have been an inestimable blessing into a dire 
curse. She is far from being the only sinner, but 
she has the misfortune of being the latest culprit. 
Her great chance of success in a political scheme 
of vast proportions that ran counter to the move- 
ment for opening up the East has been the means 
of rousing the world to the wrong course that we 
have all followed in our dealings with the East, and 
this despite great benefits that have been conferred on 
the Orient. 

VIII 
The West should seek the co-operation of the 
East. It should come as an awakener, not as a 
conqueror. The aim must be to bring to the East 
the best that the West has to offer, but not to attempt 
to make the East merely a profitable adjunct to the 
10 



146 THE WAR AND THE BAGDAD RAILWAY 

West. Nor should we go so far as to dress up the 
East in Western clothes and produce a misfit. There 
is a decided sense in which 

" East is East and West is West 
And never the twain shall meet." 

A resuscitated East must remain Eastern to bring 
about the best results. If the East has any further 
contributions to make — in art or science, in com- 
merce or thought, or perhaps in the domain of relig- 
ion in which she has given the world at least three- 
fourths of what religion there is, she can only do so 
through revivification — through the reunfolding of 
her own peculiar genius. 

All this may sound " academic " — possibly Uto- 
pian. Is there any practical policy to be followed 
upon the conclusion of the war to rectify the errors 
that have been made? I believe, yes. The story of 
the Bagdad Railway points the way out. Had the 
" internationalization " of the project been carried 
out at the start before an ambitious Emperor, arous- 
ing Pan-Germanic dreams, succeeded in attaching 
to the undertaking political aims which soon over- 
shadowed the commercial and industrial aspects, 
there would have been no clash among European 
nations over the historic highway. That highway 
would have been opened up to the entire West, and 
the process begun by Napoleon completed to the 
benefit of the world — to the benefit of the East as 
well as of the West, and all nations would have had 
their share. " Internationalization " means co-opera- 
tion among European and American nations, and such 
co-operation spells also partnership with the East, 
instead of domination . " Internationalization " in 



THE ISSUE AND THE OUTLOOK 147 

enterprises that are of importance to the world as 
a whole is a guarantee of mutual good faith, for 
where all share in the results, there is also a sharing 
of the feeling of responsibility. Internationalization 
brings home the conviction that the interest of one 
nation is bound up with the interest of all the others 
involved. 

Ever since the decline of the Turkish Empire, 
Turkey has needed the support of European nations, 
and this support should have been given, not for the 
sake of Turkey, but for the sake of the East, of which 
Turkey was merely the chief symbol. Instead, Tur- 
key has been exploited now by one group now by 
another. The European nations have been stand- 
ing around the bedside of the " sick man of Europe " 
(as Turkey has been called) for half a century, 
quarreling over the division of the prospective 
corpse. It is not an edifying spectacle. But even 
if Turkey should die, the East would still be there, 
the various peoples of the East, the Turks, the Arme- 
nians, the Arabs, the Egyptians would still remain. 

The weakness of the Turkish Empire should be 
interpreted as the call of the East to the West to 
come to its support — to bring new life to it. The 
great opportunity will come at the close of the 
war. It rests with the West to direct the momen- 
tous changes which the East is forced to face into a 
channel that will lead to its resuscitation. The 
policy of " internationalization," so plainly suggested 
by existing conditions in the East, should at least 
be given a trial. Let a beginning be made with the 
reorganization of the Bagdad Railway on a basis 
which will divide the investment among the capital- 
ists of various nations interested, with equal repre- 



148 THE WAR AND THE BAGDAD RAILWAY 

sentation in the Board of Control. That will be the 
first important step towards opening up the great 
highway to all. Asia Minor is the world's highway. 
It should be secured for the benefit of the world. 
The fate of the East, dependent upon the control 
of the route stretching from Constantinople to the 
Persian Gulf, should not be at the mercy of any one 
nation. 

The proposed policy would further involve the 
" internationalization " of Constantinople under the 
protectorate of an international commission, with a 
circuit around it, the neutrality of which should be 
guaranteed not by a few Powers but by the concert 
of nations. Internationalization has been tried in 
the instance of the Danube commission and has 
worked satisfactorily. Why should it not apply to 
Constantinople as the starting-point of the great 
highway? Sir Edwin Pears, whose life-long resi- 
dence in Constantinople makes him a valuable wit- 
ness to the needs of the East, has been advocating 
its " internationalization " since the beginning of the 
war, and the plan is meeting, one is given to under- 
stand, with favor in France. The overthrow of 
autocracy in Russia strengthens the claims for such 
" internationalization " of the historic city on the 
Bosphorus. Constantinople in the hands of Russia 
i^ould never have led to a solution of the Eastern 
Question. On the contrary, it would have compli- 
cated it by another aggravating factor. The Rus- 
sian Revolution has repudiated the policy of 
conquest, which was a part of the old regime. 
Russia, the republic, has no interest in holding 
Constantinople, if under an " international " protec- 



THE ISSUE AND THE OUTLOOK 149 

torate the passage through the straits will be open 
to all nations. Mesopotamia, Palestine and Arabia 
should likewise be placed under an " international " 
protectorate, and its populations be given the oppor- 
tunity of developing their capability for autonomy, 
which at present they do not possess. Let England 
after the war resume the protectorate over Egypt 
which she has held for so many years, and encourage 
the education of the population so as to fit them 
for Home Rule ; and France should do the same for 
Algiers and Tunis. The " internationalization " of 
Morocco, begun some years ago in a tentative 
fashion, should be made more definite, as a guaran- 
tee against a partitioning which would be an injus- 
tice. Finally, Turkey should again become what 
she originally was — an Asiatic empire. Her fatal 
error, as we have seen, was the attempt to become 
also a European power. That ambition led to her 
decline. The natural capital of Turkey is Konia (the 
ancient Iconium), which the Seljuk Sultans had 
chosen as their residence. The policy of " inter- 
nationalization " should be extended to Armenia, 
which should be organized as a separate state under 
the protection of the concert of nations, and Persia 
should be freed from all semblance of foreign domina- 
tion 10 and her neutrality similarly guaranteed by all 
the powers. 

10 The flagrant wrong done to Persia in 191 1 by Russia 
and England must not be glossed over. It needs to be undone 
thoroughly and unflinchingly. Brandes comes close to the 
truth when he calls Persia "the Asiatic Belgium." (The 
World at War, p. 250.) 



150 THE WAR AND THE BAGDAD RAILWAY 

IX 

Under such conditions, the resuscitation of the 
East will proceed slowly but surely. The Western 
spirit of enterprise will open up the vast resources 
of the East. Irrigation systems in the interior of 
Asia Minor and Mesopotamia will restore and in- 
crease the fertility of these regions. Mines and 
wells will yield their treasures. Trade with the East 
will continue to grow in amicable rivalry. Western 
methods of self-government will make their way and 
a fresh impetus given to the education of the masses 
in the East. New problems will assuredly arise, and 
international crises will occur in the future as they 
have in the past, but with the spirit of co-operation 
between West and East, replacing the ambition to 
conquer and dominate, there will be a reasonable 
hope that these critical periods will be passed with- 
out plunging the world into internecine warfare. 

It may be looking forward to Utopia to visualize 
the time when swords will be beaten into plough- 
shares, though there is no inherent reason why set- 
tlements of differences among nations by the ordeal of 
battle should not give way to other methods. Indeed, 
it may be confidently asserted, that unless as an out- 
come of the present war for democracy, a concerted 
effort for the ultimate abolition of war be made by the 
great nations who have it in their power to bring this 
about, the war will have failed of its purpose. For the 
world can never be " made safe for democracy " as 
long as the menace of war hangs over it. The spirit of 
democracy thrives in the atmosphere of pacifism. The 
deadliest foe to democracy is the militaristic spirit, 
which is always in danger of being engendered by war 



THE ISSUE AND THE OUTLOOK 151 

or, if it already exists, is in danger of being strength- 
ened by war. The war of 1914 marks the explosion of 
the militarist spirit; the war of 1917 is the pacifist 
war, for democracy is essentially pacifism. The only 
kind of war that may justifiably be waged in the name 
of democracy is a war to safeguard democracy; and 
this means a conflict for the purpose of bringing us 
nearer to the end of all wars. 

I am not concerned, however, with the distant 
future, but only with the outlook suggested by the pres- 
ent sad and depressing, though far from hopeless, condi- 
tions. Dies diem docet. The world proceeds step by 
step, each step suggested or, if you choose, imposed by 
the experiences of the past. The story of the Bagdad 
Railway as the crux of the Eastern Question during 
the past tw r enty years suggests as the next step — 
to give the policy of co-operation between East and 
West a trial. The results can assuredly not be worse 
than the mess created by the policy heretofore fol- 
lowed of exploitation, of conquest and of domina- 
tion, leading to diplomatic intrigue, mutual distrust, 
political anarchy and — culminating in the war of 1914. 

During the past century there have been three nota- 
ble international peace conferences among European 
nations, which attempted to adjust the political 
problems of Europe and the East, the Congress of 
Vienna in 181 5, of Paris in 1856, and of Berlin in 
1878. A distinguished English writer 11 has recently 
pointed out the fundamental weakness of these Con- 

II Sir John MacDonnell, "The Three European Settle- 
ments," Contemporary Review, September, 191 7. The same 
view, practically, is expressed by Messrs. Hazen, Thayer and 
Lord in their Three Peace Congresses of the Nineteenth 
Century (Cambridge, Mass., 1917). 



152 THE WAR AND THE BAGDAD RAILWAY 

gresses in their neglect of the claims of the peoples 
whose fates were involved in the proposed settle- 
ments of disputed questions. Statesmen at these 
conferences rocked themselves in the delusion that 
by a shuffling and redistribution of the cards the 
world would move on smoothly. Only in the last 
of the three Congresses was a weak attempt made 
to consider the rights of a nation to lead its own 
life. The figure of Waddington, the French statesman, 
at the Berlin Congress, stands out conspicuously as the 
spokesman for the rights of the people, but the little 
that was accomplished was, soon after the Congress, 
nullified. 

After the world has been made safe for democ- 
racy, it will be the chief task of the coming fourth 
Conference to keep it safe, by giving the first con- 
sideration to the claims of every people to life, 
liberty and the pursuit of happiness. The " old " diplo- 
macy of 1815, 1856, and 1878 went bankrupt in 1914. 
The war to safeguard democracy should lead logically 
to a " new " diplomacy, based on the principles recently 
laid down by Sir Edward Grey, " The supremacy of 
right over force . . . and the free development 
under conditions of equality and conformity to their 
own genius, of all the states, large and small, who 
constitute civilized humanity." 12 If that spirit prevails 
— and the participation of the United States ought to 
be an additional guarantee that it will — the Eastern 
Question will finally be solved, because it will be rightly 
solved. 

12 See the extract from this speech (October 23, 1916) in 
H. A. Gibbons' Reconstruction of Poland and the Near East 
(New York, I9i£), p. 66. 



NOTES 

(P. 31). The best work on Asia Minor (including 
also the Balkan Peninsula) covering the geography, ethnology, 
climate, products, routes and general conditions of life is 
by D. G. Hogarth, The Nearer East (New York, 1902). On 
the varied ethnic elements, composing the population, we now 
have an excellent article with maps and illustrations by 
Leon Dominian, "The Peoples of Northern and Central 
Asiatic Turkey," in the Bulletin of the American Geographical 
Society, vol. xlvii (1915).. PP- 833-871. 

(P. 32). For a general account of the work of Sir 
Arthur Evans and his successors, Mrs. Boyd-Hawes and 
Edith Hall, see Burrows, Discoveries in Crete, (London, 1907) 
and for an historical summary, C. H. and H. Hawes, Crete, 
the Forerunner of Greece (London, 1909). 

(P- 33)- Egyptian influence on Cretan culture is unmis- 
takable, and was the result of a contact between Cretan 
settlers and Egypt on the initiative of the former. An island 
people, debarred from expansion by conquest, is pacific and 
takes to navigation as its sole means of communication. 
Islanders become traders, and the protection and encourage- 
ment of trade led, under ancient conditions, to the growth 
of a fleet, just as in our day oversea commerce and naval 
expansion go hand in hand, in the case of both England and 
Germany. Cretan traders and the Cretan fleets are thus the 
two factors that bring about early relations with Egypt, as 
also with the Phoenician coast and the fringe of Asia Minor. 

(P. 34). The fullest account of the Hittites with illus- 
trations and illuminating discussions will be found in Gar- 
stang, Land of the Hittites (New York, 1910). An admirable 
survey from the historical and archaeological point of view 
is given by Eduard Meyer, Reich und Kultur der Chetiter 
(Berlin, 1914) — also elaborately illustrated and including 
later material than is to be found in Garstang's work. A 
general article on the Hittites by the author is embodied in 

153 



154 THE WAR AND THE BAGDAD RAILWAY 

Cheyne and Black's Encyclopedia Biblica, and one on the 
Religion of the Hittites by Dr. B. B. Charles, in Hasting^ 
Dictionary of Religion and Ethics. For further bibliography 
(up to 1910) see Garstang, op. cit., pp. 192-401. 

(P. 37). The intercourse between Asia Minor and Meso- 
potamia led to mutual art influences. The Assyrians appear 
to have adopted from the Hittites the custom of sculpturing 
elaborate scenes, lining both the exterior and interior walls of 
palaces. We find also affiliation between Egyptian and Hittite 
art. The Egyptian origin of the Hittite Sphinx, a prominent 
feature in Hittite architecture, is favored by Maspero, Struggle 
of the Nations, p. 648, and also by Eduard Meyer, Reich und 
Kultur der Chetiter, p. 24 seq. It is accepted by Breasted, 
Ancient Times, p. 142, but is questioned by Garstang, Land of 
the Hittites, p. 254, though on insufficient grounds as it appears 
to me. The fact that in Egypt the Sphinx has the body of a 
lion, whereas among the Hittites it has the body of a bull, would 
be a natural modification of a design to adapt it to Hittite 
symbolism. Besides, the great antiquity of the sphinx in Egypt 
points to that country as the source of inspiration for the art of 
Asia Minor, rather than vice versa. Another trace of Egyptian 
influence is to be seen in the symbol of the winged disc which 
is placed over the hieroglyphics, giving the name of a 
king precisely as it accompanies the royal inscriptions of 
Egypt. From the Hittites the symbol passed on to the 
Assyrians and later to the Persians. To the former it became 
the emblem of their chief god Ashur, originally the solar 
deity, to the latter of the supreme god Ahura-Mazda, whose 
name, signifying "brilliant shining one/' likewise reveals his 
solar origin. See Egyptian, Hittite and Persian Designs of 
Winged Disc in Meyer, op. cit., pp. 29 and 56, and Jastrow, 
Civilisation of Babylonia and Assyria, Plate 31. 

(P- 37)- The general character of the Hittite language 
has been determined by the transliteration of Hittite into the 
Cuneiform syllabary on clay tablets, found in large numbers at 
Boghaz-Keui by Winckler (1907). Most of the tablets were 
brought to the Imperial Ottoman Museum at Constantinople, 
and the remainder to the Berlin Museum. Among the tablets 
are a large number of fragments, containing lists of Hittite 
words, verbal forms and phrases written in cuneiform (and, 
therefore, easily read) with their equivalents in Sumerian and 
Akkadian added in parallel columns. Through the preliminary 



NOTES 155 

study of some of these fragments, Delitzsch laid the founda- 
tion for the scientific study of the Hittite language in a paper 
on Sumerisch-Akkadisch-Hettitische Vokabularfragmente 
(Abhandl. d. Kgl. Preuss Akad. d. Wiss. Philol. Hist. Klasse, 
Berlin, 1914, No. 3). This was followed by an investigation 
of an Austrian scholar, Friedrich Hrozny (Mitteilungen d. 
Deutsch. Orient Gesellschaft No. 56, May, 1916) which defi- 
nitely established the Aryan character of the Hittite language. 
On the basis of the researches of Delitzsch and Hrozny further 
progress in Hittite studies will be rapid, when once the 
texts found at Boghaz-Keui shall have been published. It 
will then be possible to approach the decipherment of the 
hieroglyphic inscriptions with a surer hand. A preliminary 
study of the Hieroglyphic Hittite inscriptions which marks 
a distinct advance over former attempts was made a few years 
ago by R. C. Thompson, A New Decipherment of the Hittite 
Hieroglyphics (London, 1913). 

(P. 38). The presence of Aryan settlements at an 
early period in Asia Minor is indicated also by the occurrence, 
in the clay tablets found at Boghaz-Keui, of the names of 
Hindu gods like Indra, Varuna and Mithra and the dioscuri 
Nasatjas, and of Aryan words like mariana "young man." 
This was first pointed out by Winckler, Vorl'dufige Nachrichten 
iiber die Ausgrabungen in Boghaz-Keui im Sommer, 1907 
(Mitteilungen d. Deutschen Orient Gesellschaft, No. 35> 
December, 1907). 

(P. 40). Supplemental to Egyptian, Babylonian and 
Assyrian records, we have a remarkable archive of official 
correspondence of governors of Palestinian towns and dis- 
tricts during the fifteenth century, with Egyptian Pharaohs 
under whose suzerainty they stood. These archives, found at 
Tel el-Amarna in Egypt and consisting of several hundred 
tablets — of official letters — shed much light on conditions 
in Palestine and Assyria during the fifteenth century before 
this era, with the Hittites as the chief disturbing element. 
Furthermore, we have the archives found at Boghaz-Keui, 
consisting of many hundreds of clay tablets in the Hittite 
language, transliterated in the Cuneiform script, by the side 
of many Cuneiform documents in the Babylonian language. 

(P. 40). These tablets are generally spoken of as Cap- 
padocian Tablets. Twenty-four of them were published a 
number of years ago by Golenischeff Vingt-Quatre Tablettes 



156 THE WAR AND THE BAGDAD RAILWAY 

Capp ado ciennes (St. Petersburg, 1891) and studied by 
Delitzsch, Zur Entzifferung der Kappadokischen Tafeln (Leip- 
zig, 1894). Others have been published and studied by Sayce 
and Pinches. 

(P. 46). On the remarkable religious reforms at- 
tempted by Ikhnaton, who proposed to concentrate the cult 
of Egypt on the sun-god Aton, see Breasted, Ancient Times, 
page 91 seq. and the interesting popular narrative of Ikhna- 
ton's reign by Weigall, Life and Times of Akhnaton, Pharaoh 
of Egypt (Edinburgh, 1910). The king changed his name 
Amenhotep, containing the element Amon and which meant 
"Amon rests," to Ikhnaton, signifying "Aton is satisfied." 
Accompanying the religious reformation there was also a 
remarkable advance to a more realistic and less conventional- 
ized art, hardly less significant as a sign of the age than the 
religious revolution which came to grief after Ikhnaton's 
death. 

(P. 47). For the treaty between Hattusil and Rameses 
II see Messerschmidt's monograph, The Hittites (English 
translation, published by the Smithsonian Institution, Annual 
Reports, 1903, pp. 681-703). 

(P. 47). See Breasted's monograph, The Battle of 
Kadesh (Chicago, 1903) for the strategic details of the 
battle, with full details of the pictorial and written material, 
including a poem composed by an ancient Egyptian on this 
famous battle. 

(P. 49). For the details of Babylonian and Assyrian 
history the reader is referred to the two volumes of L. W. 
King's History of Sumer and Akkad and to R. W. Rogers' 
comprehensive work, History of Babylonia and Assyria (6th 
edition) (New York, 1916, 2 volumes) ; for an excellent 
survey of The Ancient History of the Near East (Egypt, 
Babylonia, Hittites, Assyria, Syria and Palestine) to H. R. 
Hall's work under this title (New York, 1913). 

(P. 50). Owing to the sluggishness of the flow of the 
Euphrates which receives few tributaries after it leaves its 
mountain source, and to the deposits which are brought along 
by the down- wash, the river, choked up at one point, is often 
forced to seek a new bed as an outlet. 

(P. 50). Ashur was the capital of Assyria till c. 
1300 b.c. when it is replaced for a time by Calah, a little to the 
north. Nineveh, still further north, did not become the capital 



NOTES 157 

till i ioo b.c, and not permanently so till the reign of Shal- 
maneser III (858-824 B.C.). See Jastrow, Civilisation of 
Babylonia and Assyria, p. 25. 

(P. 51). I follow Breasted's figures for Egyptian his- 
tory, as given in his standard work, The History of Egypt 
(New York, 1909) and Ancient Times, A History of the 
Early World (Boston, 1916) which, written in a most fascinat- 
ing manner and elaborately illustrated, cannot be too highly 
recommended to anyone who wishes to obtain a view of the 
earliest civilizations of maniknd. 

(P. 52). The "sons of Heth" from whom Abraham 
purchases the cave of Macpelah (Genesis, Chapter 23) are 
our Hittites, and while the story is of late origin, and the tra- 
dition is introduced with a view of legitimatizing the claims of 
the Hebrews to a sacred spot, such as the cave must have 
been, the substratum of the tale, assuming an early possession 
of the region around Hebron by Hittites, may nevertheless 
be sound and is confirmed by other evidence of the early 
penetration of the Hittites into Palestine 1 . 

(P. 55). See for a general account of Alexander's 
conquests, B. I. Wheeler's admirable work, Alexander the 
Great (New York, 1900) and Janke, Auf Alexander des 
Grossen Pfaden. Eine Reise durch Kleinasien (Berlin, 1904) 
for a detailed investigation of Alexander's routes in Asia 
Minor. 

(P. 57). Excavations at Pergamon on a large scale 
were carried on by German archaeologists, the results of which 
are set forth in a magnificent publication, Altertuemer von 
Pergamon, published by the German government (Berlin, 

1885-1913). 

(P. 58). Attalus bequeathed his possessions to Rome, 
which is to be taken as a "diplomatic" recognition of the 
status quo, just as Rome claimed that Alexander II (Ptolemy 
IX) had bequeathed Cyprus to her, as the justification for 
annexing it in 58 B.C. and as Ptolemy Apion in recognition 
of the inevitable had bequeathed the province of Cyrenaica 
on his death in 96 B.C. to Rome. 

(P. 59). The rivers of Mesopotamia, and, more par- 
ticularly, the Euphrates, bring with them a rich deposit from 
the mountain region through which they flow and which gives 
to the soil a remarkable fertility. The silt thus left behind 
adds steadily to the land. This growth of land at the 



158 THE WAS AND THE BAGDAD RAILWAY 

Persian Gulf goes on steadily at an astonishing rate. Cities 
which in the days of antiquity lay at the head of the Persian 
Gulf are now some 90 miles from the coast. When Bagdad 
was founded in the ninth century, Basra (or Bassorah), 500 
miles south, was its port. Since then the accretion of soil 
has necessitated the creation of a second port, Fao — about 
60 miles from Basra. 

(P. 59). In connection with the annual deluge pro- 
duced by the overflow of the rivers, it may be noted that 
the Biblical story of the Deluge, carried by the Hebrews to 
their later Palestinian homes, is based on the natural occur- 
rence in Mesopotamia every year during the winter season, 
prior to the perfection of the canal system. The story is a 
nature myth, illustrating the change from the dry to the wet 
season, as the creation story marks the change from the wet to 
the dry season. See Jastrow, Hebrew and Babylonian Tradi- 
tions, Chapter II. At present through the neglect of this 
system, large portions of southern Mesopotamia are annually 
submerged. 

(P. 64). The best general work on the Turks is by 
Vambery, Das Turkenvolk (Leipzig, 1885). Recent investiga- 
tions of value are Cahun, Turcs et Mongols (Paris, 1896), 
E. H. Parker, A Thousand Years of the Tartars (London, 
1895) and La Jonquiere, Histoire de V Empire Ottoman (Paris, 
1914, 2 volumes). H. A. Gibbons, The Foundation of the 
Ottoman Empire (New York, 1916) is excellent for the period 
that it covers. 

(P. 83). The full text of the convention, together with 
supplementary documents (in French), will be found at- 
tached to David Fraser, The Short Cut to India (London, 
1909), pp. 316-381. The literature on the Bagdad Railway 
is most voluminous. Besides Fraser's book which goes fully 
into the subject, one may refer to Andre Cheradame, La 
Macedoine, Le Chemin de Fer de Bagdad (Paris, 1903) for 
the French view; to Paul Rohrbach, Die Bagdadbahn (Ber- 
lin, 1902) and Jaeckh, Deutschland im Orient nach dem Balkan- 
krieg (Munich, 1913) for the German view. A good survey up 
to 1914 will be found in two articles of A. Geraud, The Story 
of the Baghdad Railway, in Nineteenth Century for May and 
June, 1914, and for the most recent developments in Dominian, 
The Railroads of Turkey (Bulletin of the American Geo- 
graphical Society, 1915, xlvii, pp. 934-940), and H. Charles 
Woods, The Bagdad Railway and Its Tributaries {Geograph- 



NOTES 159 

ical Journal, Volume L, July, 1917, pp. 3 2 ~57)- For a general 
account of railways in Turkey see Coureau, La Locomotive en 
Turquie d'Asie (Brussels, 1895), George Young, Corps de 
Droit, Ottoman (Paris, 1906), or Cheradame's work. To 
make the record of railways in Asia Minor complete, it should 
be added that there is a small railway, built by a French 
company, of 41 kilometres, or 26 miles, running from Brusa, 
the ancient capitol of the Turkish Empire, to its port Mudania, 
on the Sea of Marmora, as indicated on the map. Though 
begun as far back as 1873, work on it was suspended and it 
was not opened until 1892. 

(P. 98). The first of the brothers, Lieutenant Lynch, 
came with Colonel Chesney in 1835 to take part in a survey 
expedition of Mesopotamia. This expedition transported two 
small steamers, which they called The Tigris and The 
Euphrates, in pieces across the desert from a place near 
Antioch on the Orontes to the Euphrates at Birejik. The 
Tigris was lost in the difficult journey along the Euphrates, 
but the other boat reached the Persian Gulf and was the 
first steamboat to go up the Tigris. See Chesney, Narrative 
of the Euphrates Expedition (London, 1868). 

(P. 105). The funds for the building of this road were 
obtained through contributions from Mohammedans in all 
parts of the world — an amazing example of the strong hold 
that the pilgrimage to Mecca still has upon Moslems and will 
no doubt continue to have. This obligation on every Moslem 
to pay a visit once in his life to the Holy City and perform 
the traditional rites creates a bond of union among Moslems, 
the strength of which cannot be overestimated. The rail- 
way to Medina (now completed) and to Mecca will by 
stimulating travel to the sacred cities tend to strengthen the 
hold of Islam on its votaries. The distance from Damascus 
to Medina is 820 miles. The entire stretch from Aleppo to 
Mecca is 1354 miles ; from Damascus to Mecca, 1097. See on 
the Hedjaz Railway, Maunsell in the Geographical Journal for 
December, 1908, and in the National Geographic Magazine, 
Vol. 20 (1909), pp. 156-193 (richly illustrated). 

(P. 112). See Sir Wm. Willcocks' Irrigation of Meso- 
potamia (London, 1911; 2 volumes — texts and charts). The 
scheme proposed is one of vast proportions, covering an area 
of one and a half million hectares to be affected by barrage 
works. Willcocks divided the proposed construction into six 



160 THE WAR AND THE BAGDAD RAILWAY 

divisions at a total estimated cost of twenty-nine million 
Turkish liras. One of these divisions, the Hindia branch of 
the Euphrates, was completed in December, 1913, and is now 
in successful operation. 

In this connection it may be interesting to note also 
plans for developing irrigation in central Asia Minor. A Ger- 
man company has cut a canal from Lake Beyshehr to Chumla, 
near Konia, to irrigate a tract of 12,000 square kilometres 
and which will transform an arid wilderness into fertile 
fields (Levant Trade Review for March, 1915, p. 353). This 
work has been completed, and the Turkish government is 
now considering plans for irrigation in the Cilician plain 
which will greatly increase the cotton and sugar-cane crops. 
The plans include the regulation of the water supply of three 
rivers, the Saihun, the Jihan and the Berdanjaj. The total 
cost is estimated at four million Turkish liras ($17,700,000). 
See Levant Trade Review for June, 1916, p. 46. 

(P. 150). The vast resources of Asia Minor, Northern 
Syria and Mesopotamia can hardly be exaggerated. With 
railroad connection and irrigation works (see note to p. 112), 
the development of the natural wealth and fertility will be 
the crucial factor in restoring the Near East to the position it 
once held in the world. The northeastern region from Diar- 
bekr to the shores of the Black Sea is rich in copper mines 
(Levant Trade Review, June 16, p. 79), which will be opened 
up through the projected railway to cover the stretch from 
Angora-Sivas-Diarbekr with connections to Sinope and Trebi- 
zond on the Black Sea. The cotton crop in the province of 
Adana for 1914 amounted to 120,000 bales. It is said that the 
cotton industries of Adana supplied a large proportion of the 
undergarments and summer uniforms for the Turkish army 
during the present war. Through the proposed irrigation 
scheme for the Cilician plain (see preceding note), the cul- 
tivation will be still further increased. The rug and the 
fig industries in the district of Smyrna are among the 
largest in the world. In Mesopotamia there are rich oil fields 
and extensive asphalt deposits. Through irrigation works 
in Mesopotamia the cereal products will again realize their 
astonishing returns for which the region was famous in 
antiquity. The irrigation of central Asia Minor will likewise 
turn that region into a vast agricultural centre of untold 
possibilities. See further Chapter VI in Fraser, Short Cut to 
India. 














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